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"What makes [Pat Metheney Group's 2005 album] The Way Up [68m] so remarkable is its sense of drama, and a keen visual sense that makes the entire piece, divided into four tracks for the purpose of navigation only, truly feel like a single composition rather than a series of interconnected segments. Themes are introduced and reiterated throughout the course of the piece; sometimes overtly, other times so subtly that they are only revealed after repeated listening." - All About Jazz [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 9:39 PM PST - 7 comments

Is "Ass" the Most Complicated Word in the English Language?
posted by storybored at 8:19 PM PST - 34 comments

Threads Of Our Game is a visual almanac of 19th-century baseball uniforms, hand-drawn (based on historical images and research) by Craig Brown. [more inside]
posted by jessamyn at 8:08 PM PST - 9 comments

I was taught that Star Trek was real. [more inside]
posted by Halloween Jack at 2:47 PM PST - 44 comments

Witch (Craft) Beer — How a New Wave of Brewers are Incorporating Magic into Beer - Beth Demmon at Good Beer Hunting

“People are just craving connection,” says Moses. “[But] I had a lot of trouble getting people into their own ritual.” Her clients’ desires to add spiritual healing to their schedules were complicated by today’s fast-paced world. She wondered: “How do I get these plants into their rituals if their ritual is to have a beer with their partner when they get home from work?”

[more inside]
posted by CrystalDave at 2:28 PM PST - 5 comments

Halloween and Stranger Danger Bizarre restrictions are levied against people on the sex offense registry on Halloween. But do they actually make children safer or simply reveal what we fear? [Boston Review] [more inside]
posted by readinghippo at 1:40 PM PST - 26 comments

Bernadette Banner is here to straighten us out on 500 Years of “Historical” Halloween Costumes. (SLYT)
posted by jocelmeow at 1:38 PM PST - 9 comments

In Montreal, Halloween has been postponed until tomorrow. Reactions are mixed.
posted by clawsoon at 1:09 PM PST - 50 comments

Kern in hell. “Sweet Jesus, this is unsettling,” someone wrote on Twitter. Another called it “a short-form horror story for graphic designers.” Hellvetica is free to download (may heaven have mercy on your soul).
posted by MiraK at 1:09 PM PST - 32 comments

When Patti Lupone Haunted A Laundromat: "It was the pilot for a series called 'Hip Pocket Musicals,' which was pitched to PBS but never aired. Each episode would have been a different half-hour mini-musical with the same group of actors. The first one was called 'Love Cycle: A Soap Operetta,' and it starred LuPone as a vengeful ghost who haunts a laundromat." Direct link to the full video. The full "Love Cycle"script (pdf) via writer-producer David Misch's website, and a 2014 interview with "Love Cycle" creator Bill Burnett. David Misch previously.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 12:38 PM PST - 3 comments

The Witcher [YouTube][Official Trailer] Netflix’s take on The Witcher is officially coming on Dec. 20. The series takes all of its inspiration from Andrzej Sapkowski’s book series instead of the incredibly popular RPG series from CD Projekt Red. [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 12:31 PM PST - 32 comments

"We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes," writes Aldo Leopold in "Thinking Like a Mountain" (pdf link), a short essay published posthumously in A Sand County Almanac. [more inside]
posted by compartment at 12:19 PM PST - 3 comments

We were having lunch because I wanted information about Ivar Haglund, the kooky restaurateur behind the seafood empire that bears his name....Ivar's life was once closely intertwined with Linda "the Starvation Doctor" Hazzard, who killed at least 18 people in the Seattle area a century ago. Hazzard's first known kill in Washington was Daisy Haglund, Ivar's mother. By Lester Black for The Stranger
posted by bq at 11:55 AM PST - 11 comments

As the House gets serious about the next phase of the impeachment inquiry, confirmation of the Ukraine quid pro quo allegations keep piling up, and two volatile meetings at the White House have become central to the impeachment inquiry. [more inside]
posted by katra at 11:24 AM PST - 1820 comments

"The fires and the blackouts aren’t like the earthquakes, a natural threat we’ve all chosen to ignore. They are more like California’s other problems, like housing affordability and homelessness and traffic — human-made catastrophes we’ve all chosen to ignore, connected to the larger dysfunction at the heart of our state’s rot: a failure to live sustainably." [more inside]
posted by postmortemsalmon at 10:35 AM PST - 37 comments

Are you afraid of the dark? You will be! It's time for Jezebel's Annual Scary Story Contest, where Jezebel readers submit their own real stories as comments. Bonus from Jezebel: scary story videos
posted by filthy light thief at 10:19 AM PST - 5 comments

Jon Bois and Kofie Yeboah invite us back to the Fumble Dimension, where they, along with other compatriots, abuse NFL Head Coach 09 to see who can create the greatest offensive play in part 1 of a two part episode. (SLYT) [more inside]
posted by NoxAeternum at 10:06 AM PST - 4 comments

"A woman with great hair is fleeing a gothic house. This is a signal to the reader that this is one of ‘those’ books – not a historical romance or a ghost story, but a modern gothic. It was one of the most successful genres in pulp, now sadly neglected. Let's change that..." [Twitter thread from @PulpLibrarian] [more inside]
posted by Atom Eyes at 10:01 AM PST - 13 comments

“Capital,” Marx tells us, “is dead labour, that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks. The time during which the labourer works, is the time during which the capitalist consumes the labour-power he has purchased of him.” Reading Marx On Halloween (Jacobin) “ The emerging proletariat had to be trained to defer gratification; to stifle desire; to value accumulation over expenditure. A belief in magic, instead, centered desires—and their fulfillment—communal and personal, for care and sustenance and protection. It is no surprise, then, that magic is in vogue again just as the old bargains around work are breaking down.“ All Organizing Is Magic: Verso's Caliban and the Witch Roundtable with Sarah Jaffe. Trump's Presidency Has Spawned a New Generation of Witches. (Wired)
posted by The Whelk at 8:38 AM PST - 9 comments

Why Don't We Eat Swans? We’re not so squeamish about chicken, turkey, pigeon, or goose, but these long-necked beauties have long been off-limits. (The Outline)
posted by not_the_water at 8:33 AM PST - 66 comments

Blue Heron Farm raises goats. On Halloween they wear costumes.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 7:57 AM PST - 9 comments

A woman rents a cabin to finish out her book in Sarah Pinsker's A Blur in the Corner of Your Eye. A folklorist investigates ghost stories in Naomi Kritzer's The Thing About Ghost Stories. There is something that is not a dog in Kathleen Kayembe's You Will Always Have a Family: A Triptych. [more inside]
posted by dinty_moore at 7:46 AM PST - 6 comments

When a down-and-out doctor finds his rundown mansion is haunted, he pulls the quintessentially American move: opening the house to the public for a fee. Everything goes wrong from there. [more inside]
posted by poffin boffin at 6:10 AM PST - 10 comments

Strange things are afoot at TheMERL, and all is not well; I doubt some fowl play, would the night were come.
posted by taz at 4:51 AM PST - 5 comments

In Search of Afro-Solarpunk - Part 1: Elements of Afrofuturism. Part 2: Social Justice is Survival Technology. On Tor.com Rob Cameron writes about the intersecting interests of Afrofuturism and solarpunk, and how they might integrate further and more fruitfully. [more inside]
posted by ocular shenanigans at 4:09 AM PST - 8 comments

Did you know that (allegedly) golf courses change the location of the little holes daily? Here's how.
Extra bonus: A fantastic list of other Specialized Tools.
(Obligatory)
posted by growabrain at 2:29 AM PST - 21 comments

In Unbelievable and Know My Name, sexual assault survivors confront the profound injustices of the justice system. Unbelievable, released on Netflix in September, is an eight-episode drama based on the true story of an 18-year-old in Washington state who reported a rape, then recanted when police officers told her they were skeptical of her story. (She was only vindicated after her rapist attacked five more women.) Know My Name is a new memoir from Chanel Miller, formerly known as Emily Doe, whose victim impact statement was widely read on BuzzFeed after her assailant, Brock Turner, was sentenced to six months in county jail for sexually assaulting her while she was unconscious. Viewed as companion pieces, the series and the book make a powerful statement about the ways the justice system betrays its promises to protect victims, putting their own character and credibility on trial when they try to speak up about someone else’s crime.
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 9:18 PM PST - 7 comments

18th Century Dresses From Ikea Textiles. Apparently, Ikea has a history of reproducing 18th century textiles. And, since it can be difficult to find modern natural-fiber fabrics in prints that feel historically accurate, costumers use them to make dresses. American Duchess offers her advice on selecting your fabric from Ikea home furnishings here.
posted by crush at 7:54 PM PST - 14 comments

"The couch in my therapy office is occupied mostly by white people. Anxious white people and depressed white people. Obsessive white people and compulsive white people. White people who hurt people and white people who hurt themselves. White people who eat too much, drink too much, work too much, shop too much. White people who are bored, envious, guilty, numb. Racist white people and antiracist white people. White people who look across the room and see a white therapist listening. We talk about everything. Except being white."
posted by The corpse in the library at 5:58 PM PST - 37 comments

Lawyer and journalist Dahlia Lithwick, who writes about the courts, the Supreme Court, and the rule of law at Slate (and hosts the Amicus podcast), wrestles with the fallout from the Kavanaugh hearings and how she thinks about the Supreme Court now, a year later. Why I Haven't Gone Back to SCOTUS Since Kavanaugh. [more inside]
posted by suelac at 4:30 PM PST - 42 comments

Despite evidence to the contrary, JaNee Nyberg knows how to make a proper Old Fashioned. [more inside]
posted by me3dia at 2:43 PM PST - 50 comments

On October 1st, China celebrated its 70th birthday (now surpassing the Soviet Union, which only got to 69). There was a big parade in Beijing to commemorate the occasion. Videos, commentary, details - there's a lot [more inside]
posted by Rash at 2:31 PM PST - 11 comments

The Final Five Percent. "If traumatic brain injuries can impact the parts of the brain responsible for personality, judgment, and impulse control, maybe injury should be a mitigating factor in criminal trials — but one neuroscientist discovers that assigning crime a biological basis creates more issues than it solves." [more inside]
posted by homunculus at 1:56 PM PST - 11 comments

(sl AO3) : Demonology and the Tri-Phasic Model of Trauma: An Integrative Approach
posted by Cozybee at 1:39 PM PST - 29 comments

Robots, scary galaxies, new outfits, and a lack of spots. Asteroid 1998 HL1 flew pretty close by the Earth. The sun is spotless, and has been so for a while. (Previously) [more inside]
posted by doctornemo at 1:32 PM PST - 6 comments

Social network’s move comes as Facebook faces controversy over ads that promote misinformation Jack Dorsey announced today that Twitter will stop all paid political advertising globally because 'political reach should be earned not bought'.
posted by roolya_boolya at 1:18 PM PST - 47 comments

Musical polymath, multi-instrumentalist, harmonic badass, and all around cool dude Jacob Collier's insanely impressive cover of All Night Long. [more inside]
posted by Lutoslawski at 12:04 PM PST - 10 comments

The Very Real Person Behind Twitter’s Surreal ‘Shitty Gamer Takes’ Account [Vice Gaming] “You might think you’ve read the worst gamers have to offer. This account argues otherwise. It’s an account both exhausting and cathartic, where the typical response is likely to be the same face as the account’s fatigued Cole Phelps avatar. You’re forced to bear witness to the frustrating hypocrisy and regressive views shared by a surprisingly large swathe of the video game community, but because Shitty Gamer Takes’s following is mostly people there to communally dunk on these people, at its best, it can be a place that feels oddly welcoming. Sometimes, I’ll click through the hilarious responses to a particularly infuriating take and, for a brief and shining moment, be reminded how many good people are out there. There are a lot of joke accounts on Twitter, but Shitty Gamer Takes often achieves more than just humor.” [via: Twitter @GamerTakes] [NSFW Warning: Twitter account is full of screenshots of offensive comments: sexism, racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, threats of violence, etc.]
posted by Fizz at 12:01 PM PST - 23 comments

"Elise, I think it’s a little hypocritical that you want to check into a hotel. Weren’t you the one who wanted to spend more time together as a family? That means you, me, Harper, Harper’s new invisible friend, and the swarms of flies that periodically pour from our open mouths. Do you really want to ruin Taco Night?"

We’re the Husbands from Every Haunted House Movie, and We Think You’re Just Not Giving Our New Home a Chance [Amanda Lehr, McSweeney's]
posted by Atom Eyes at 9:40 AM PST - 55 comments

I define grief as some visible response to death that goes beyond curiosity or exploration to include altered daily routines plus signs of emotional distress. Horses who merely nudge or sniff at the body of a dead companion, for example, can't be said to be grieving. Horses who stand vigil (Independent) in a hushed circle, for many hours, at the fresh grave of a lost friend may well be grieving. A horse who refuses food and companionship, becomes listless and won't follow normal routines for days when her friend dies? Why wouldn't we see this as grief? [...]As I've mentioned, it's not only the big-brained "usual suspects" — the apes (NPR), elephants (NatGeo) and dolphins (ScienceMag) — who grieve. Barbara J. King, writing for NPR [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 9:13 AM PST - 12 comments

Breaking a murmuration " The hunters typically came in low and motored upwind, pushing the starlings up. The targets always stayed in formation to keep away from the assailants' talons: “It’s everybody for themselves” in pulling for the safest position, [Nick]Dunlop says. They’d veer and weave to throw the predator of their tails, and more often than not, the raptors would give up. "
posted by dhruva at 8:59 AM PST - 10 comments

A few weeks ago, Shannon Downey found an embroidered map of the US at an estate sale, along with hundreds of pieces of an unfinished quilt. Both were the projects of a woman named Rita Smith, who died at age 99. Downey's hobby was to buy uncompleted embroidery projects to finish herself, but this quilt was a massive undertaking. So she reached out on Instagram, and a thousand strangers signed up to help. [more inside]
posted by Mchelly at 8:38 AM PST - 19 comments

“ One goal is the radical democratization of existing unions, which would redistribute power from union leadership to the rank and file, empowering workers to take a more confrontational approach to fighting back. Another involves new unionization campaigns in sectors at the heart of the US economy, from “pink collar” sectors like health care and education to more traditional strongholds of worker power, such as logistics and manufacturing. “Socialists have really operated as small cells of activists looking for ways to flyer at a strike here, or hold onto a seat in a local union there,” says Ryan Mosgrove, a Washington, DC delegate and Teamsters staffer. “Now we’re talking about large-scale labor [mobilization] as socialist workers. It’s a whole other ball game.” From the Ashes of the Old (Jewish Currents)
posted by The Whelk at 8:29 AM PST - 2 comments

“The World Is, of Course, Insane”: A Conversation with Errol Morris in the New Yorker [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 7:40 AM PST - 6 comments

Nine Inch Nails - Closer But It's Ghostbusters By Ray Parker Jr. [SLYT]
posted by SansPoint at 7:38 AM PST - 31 comments

like walking on a sidewalk, staying calm, stop[ping] at red lights. The Guardian photo essay of Julie-Lou Dubreuilh, urban shepherd of Paris.
posted by Hypatia at 6:03 AM PST - 9 comments

Neuroscientists turned to an internet-famous phrase to identify the region of the brain that controls pitch and emphasis in human speech. (sl Wired)
posted by Caduceus at 3:42 AM PST - 50 comments

My 70s TV. My 80s TV. My 90s TV.
posted by MoonOrb at 11:33 PM PST - 37 comments

How do you compost a human body—and why would you? Earlier this year, the state of Washington legalized human composting. Katrina Spade, the driving force behind this alternative burial method, is gearing up her company Recompose to make the service available by 2021. [more inside]
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 10:58 PM PST - 15 comments

Irish Chef Makes a Classic Danish Dish - It involves fresh fish, toast, mayo, and pickles. And the best accent that ever should exist to explain how to prepare a traditional Danish dish in the English language.
posted by Slap*Happy at 7:48 PM PST - 22 comments

The story line was always simple: Snow White travels the globe in search of Prince Charming and meets assorted mythical, political, and pop culture figures along the way; hilarity (and big, splashy musical numbers) ensues. But what the cast and crew of Beach Blanket Babylon did with that bare-bones premise has become the stuff of San Francisco—and theater—legend.

An oral history: Pulling Back the Curtain on Beach Blanket Babylon. This New Year’s Eve at Club Fugazi, after more than 17,000 performances seen by a total of 6.5 million attendees, the show is ending its 45-year run.
posted by Lexica at 7:43 PM PST - 28 comments

A riot had broken out at the Miami Aerospace Academy, a private military school in Little Havana, where screaming students were said to be “possessed by spirits.” This was no trick-or-treat prank. One teenager was unconscious; others injured. Kids had smashed windows and ripped doors from their hinges. Police and firefighters who raced to the scene found hundreds of hysterical high schoolers fleeing the building as if it were ablaze. The Devil, it seemed, was to blame.
posted by COD at 4:18 PM PST - 42 comments

Oct 24, 1989 [a few days late for the anniversary, apologies], renowned (perhaps revered) performance and recording artist Laurie Anderson released her fourth studio album Strange Angels. A departure from earlier musical styles (much more singing), yet continuing with her observations about humanity and absurdity and sound experimentation, the album served as a bit of a soundtrack release for her performance art show Empty Places [audience bootleg, good quality, 1h33m]. Side A: Strange Angels, Monkey's Paw, Coolsville, Ramon [Leno appearance from 1990 with interview recommend!], Babydoll [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 3:57 PM PST - 21 comments

Alan Moore's unknown scripts for the Daily Mail's long-running Fred Bassett strip.
posted by Paul Slade at 3:56 PM PST - 3 comments

This essay is just Harry Potter for people who think comparing things to Harry Potter is stupid. Or some shit.
posted by sapagan at 12:39 PM PST - 56 comments

Yesterday, the editorial staff at Deadspin received a notice from G/O Media editorial manager Paul Maidment telling them, essentially, to "stick to sports," eschewing the greater grab-bag of meandering topics (and notably the left-leaning political bent) that had become the site's brand. In response, Editor Barry Patchesky posted old non-sports content on the front page as a "thumb in the eye" of the edict, leading to his firing this afternoon. Deadspin's Drew Magary explains why there's no such thing as sticking to sports.
posted by Navelgazer at 11:30 AM PST - 208 comments

All the Wrong People Love Jesus Is King [The Root] “Like many black folks, I grew up in a deeply religious household. That meant prayers before every meal, three church services a week on Sundays and Wednesdays, and pretending like a lot of gospel rappers weren’t fucking terrible. Thankfully, now I’m a grown-ass man who no longer attends vacation bible school or is coerced into turning a blind eye to Reverend Pastor Deacon Elder’s frequent extramarital excursions. So with my days of church pews and altar calls well behind me, I can say what a lot of lying ass Christians can’t: that this new Kanye album is some bullshit.” [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 11:28 AM PST - 43 comments

What happened to Hill could discourage other women — especially younger and LGBTQ women — from seeking careers in the public eye. As Hill acknowledged, she had a serious lapse in judgment, and her resignation wasn’t necessarily unexpected. But her story also appears to be an example of a revenge porn campaign that worked, driving its target from her chosen career. Some say that could discourage women, especially younger women who have dated since the advent of phone cameras, from running for office or seeking positions of power. As Wu put it, “they’re going to look at this situation and say, boy, what if I’m the next one?” [more inside]
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 11:26 AM PST - 84 comments

Are you a self-taught software engineer, bootcamp grad, precocious high school student, or just have a few wintry months to kill? Time to Teach Yourself Computer Science with an opinionated list of the best autodidactic resources on a range of CS topics! [more inside]
posted by theodolite at 10:18 AM PST - 38 comments

I could have made specific solutions for each, but I thought “How could I solve this in the most general way possible?” and an idea came to me: I could make a font that uses fancy font shaping features to insert commas in all numbers, everywhere. 2000 words from Tristan Hume for Jane Street.
posted by cgc373 at 9:44 AM PST - 25 comments

“The changes that the Senate Judiciary Committee have made has created a rubber stamp for nominees to sail through,” Buchert said. “Nominee after nominee is either unqualified, or hiding their writings from the committee, or they’ve got clear views on LGBT people that show they aren’t going to provide fair and impartial justice.” How Trump fucked the courts for a generation (Outline) “ In the face of an enemy Supreme Court, the only option is for progressives to begin work on a long-term plan to recast the role of fundamental law in our society for the sake of majority rule—disempowering the courts and angling, when they can, to redo our undemocratic constitution itself.” Resisting the Juristocracy (Boston Review) How Democrats Can Insulate New Laws From a Hostile Supreme Court (American Prospect)
posted by The Whelk at 8:25 AM PST - 29 comments

Malaysia, known by that name or not, has been a vital trading post for huge empires: China, India, the Arabs, the Netherlands, Portugal, England. The indigenous people of Malaysia, called the Orang Asal, practice what the state (and researchers) tend to classify as a type of animism, with various natural objects held as sacred. And all of those empires left their religions—and their more spiritualist aspects—behind, too. [...] There are hundreds, probably thousands of [hantu], ranging from natural spirits ... to vampire-type ghosts to leprechaun-like tricksters. Malaysia Has Good Ghosts, Bad Ghosts, and Gremlin-Babies That Will Steal Your Stuff (Atlas Obscura, talking with Dr. Cheryl L. Nicholas, an ethnographer who enjoys doing research in her homeland, Malaysia) [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 8:21 AM PST - 9 comments

“This was basically where the paradigm that we see now on the internet with linked documents and things like that was first developed,” Duvall says. “We always envisioned that we would have a series of interconnected workstations and interconnected people. We called them knowledge centers in those days, because we were academically oriented.” Within a few weeks of Kline and Duvall’s first successful communication, the ARPA network extended to computers at UC Santa Barbara and the University of Utah. And ARPANET grew from there, through the ’70s and much of the 1980s, connecting more and more government and academic computers. And later the concepts developed in ARPANET would be applied to the internet we know today. 50 years ago today, the internet was born in Room 3420 [FastCompany] [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 7:29 AM PST - 6 comments

Having a rough day? At least you’re (probably) not another victim of the West Omaha car-catching rock.
posted by Etrigan at 3:38 AM PST - 100 comments

Some satisfying gifs:
Jelly vs Stairs
Incense making
Drawing an 'S' using spirograph
Destroying a spool of thread
Ceramics
Chinese parade
Spoonful of honey [more inside]
posted by growabrain at 2:46 AM PST - 25 comments

India's Roopkund is a lake filled with hundreds of skeletons. Previous study had concluded that everyone had been killed by a catastrophic hailstorm, but new research indicates that the skeletons are not all from the same time period or even the same geographic area. What killed the visitors to Skeleton Lake?
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 9:11 PM PST - 24 comments

Robert Evans has died at 89. LA Times / NYT / CNN. [more inside]
posted by aspersioncast at 3:44 PM PST - 21 comments

Jonathan Glazer unexpectedly releases new short film on BBC2 "According to an interview with the Guardian, the piece was inspired directly by an image of Donald Trump’s sons trophy hunting big game, as well as the work of playwright and poet Bertolt Brecht and Goya’s Disasters of War etchings. Glazer is also preparing to shoot his first feature for seven years, a Holocaust drama set in Auschwitz." [more inside]
posted by Balthamos at 3:08 PM PST - 3 comments

A Woman’s Work: Till Death Do Us Part: Carolita Johnson considers the emotional and physical labor required of women as their loved ones die. [Longreads] "I’ve come to understand [...] dying isn’t just about the one person doing the dying. It’s an undertaking woven by and around many people, and this has a certain beauty." [more inside]
posted by readinghippo at 2:43 PM PST - 11 comments

The fools who write the textbooks of advanced mathematics — and they are mostly clever fools — seldom take the trouble to show you how easy the easy calculations are... Being myself a remarkably stupid fellow, I have had to unteach myself the difficulties, and now beg to present to my fellow fools the parts that are not hard. [more inside]
posted by theodolite at 10:12 AM PST - 54 comments

Brendan Caldwell writes one of his last rockpapershotgun pieces on homes physical and digital.
posted by curious nu at 9:38 AM PST - 13 comments

Japan's Best Boring Halloween Costumes [Kotaku] “...at this annual event in Japan, participants are trying to do something far simpler—boring, even. This event is called “Jimi Halloween” (地味ハロウィン), with jimi (地味) meaning “mundane,” “plain,” or “subdued.” [...] Here are some of the best mundane costumes: Someone who cannot get a seat at the food court in the mall. The costume of a person wearing black clothing that has played with a cat. This woman is dressed as a person who is taking a photo of a meal. The person who cleans the escalator’s handrail. Someone about to win Old Maid. This man is dressed as a right-handed person. A person who is drinking a hot beverage. This is a costume of a person who would get mistaken as store staff at an eyeglasses shop. A person who has just purchased an umbrella the moment it stops raining. A guy who can’t find where his seat is at the baseball stadium.”
posted by Fizz at 8:25 AM PST - 69 comments

“ The artwork will involve hundreds of reenactors in period specific clothing marching for two days covering 26 miles. The reenactment, the culmination of a period of organizing and preparation, will take place upriver from New Orleans in the locations where the 1811 revolt occurred—the exurban communities and industry that have replaced the sugar plantations will be its backdrop. The reenactment will be an impressive and startling sight—hundreads of Black re-enactors, many on horses, flags flying, in 19th-century French colonial garments, singing in Creole and English to African drumming.“ On November 8-9, 2019, hundreds of re-enactors will retrace the path of the largest slave rebellion in United States history, embodying a story of resistance, freedom and revolutionary action.
posted by The Whelk at 8:12 AM PST - 12 comments

[On Oct. 18, 2019], Prince’s estate surprise-dropped an acoustic demo (YouTube) of a 20-year-old Prince singing a sparse version of “I Feel For You,” the song Chaka Khan would later turn into a comeback hit in 1984 (YT). [...] Is the recording good? Undoubtedly. [...] What’s less clear? Whether we should have access to this recording, an early unfinished work by a notoriously private artist, at all. Reckoning with the Ethics of the Ever-Unfurling Prince Vault -- The demos, b-sides and rarities keep coming. How should we feel about listening? (Katie Cameron for Paste Magazine) Related: Rights of the Dead, a legal article by Kirsten Rabe Smolensky (full article PDF).
posted by filthy light thief at 8:05 AM PST - 33 comments

Reeves Wiedeman at NY Mag gazes into the future of Condé Nast (Vogue, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Wired, GQ, Pitchfork...) under Anna Wintour and a new CEO. "On the sales side, magazines were combined into clusters — one includes both Teen Vogue and The New Yorker. A once-cohesive magazine might now have people spread out over three or four floors of the building. It certainly reduced the internecine warfare, but at the price of everyone feeling they were on the same brand team. Shortly after the hubbing, a Creative Group employee tacked a pale-pink Post-it on a wall in the office, summing up their feelings on the situation: WE ARE CREATIVES, NOT 2ND CLASS CITIZENS."
posted by adrianhon at 7:06 AM PST - 17 comments

Jason Snell of Six Colors takes a look at the on-screen graphics used by the various broadcasters of the Major League Baseball playoffs, and finds that "With the exception of MLB Network, which needs to go back to the woodshed, these are all graphics packages worth applauding."
posted by Etrigan at 12:26 AM PST - 22 comments

Still wondering why Game of Thrones was such a mess? David Benioff and D.B Weiss talked about the show at the ongoing Austin Film Festival and there were lots of WTFs.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 9:16 PM PST - 226 comments

Philosophy often emphasises the significance of being the same person despite change. It asks how various changes – such as total memory loss or a brain transplant – might create a different person. This helps to clarify aspects of personal identity and the self, but it also overshadows intuitions about the significance of change itself. The ideal or model way to persist through time is not to stay exactly the same. Instead, it is to change.
posted by eirias at 4:31 PM PST - 20 comments

As they say, not all heroes wear capes. Some wear Chanel, hoop earrings and an England t-shirt. She didn’t know it when she posted her investigative report on Twitter, but Coleen Rooney lifted a nation deep in Brexit gloom. It is, after all, a story that has everything, as evidenced by its breathless (and global) reaction. But part of its appeal is its accessibility. We are all still figuring out how our personal lives tessellate with our digital ones. And when so many of our relationships are entangled with social media, are we in fact falling into a trap of mutual surveillance of our friends and family? Hannah Jane Parkinson investigates the significance of Wagatha. [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 3:11 PM PST - 23 comments

Scoring Godzilla : "We all know Godzilla’s iconic roar, but the musician who scored Godzilla's rampages is not as well known. The composer Akira Ifukube’s collaboration with the director Ishiro Honda is fascinating because the two men had different ideas of what Godzilla represented. Honda filmed Godzilla as a monster, but Ifukube saw Godzilla as an anti-hero." -- The Imaginary Worlds podcast presents an excellent story on the origin of Godzilla's theme music. [more inside]
posted by kaibutsu at 2:45 PM PST - 9 comments

RIP, Michael Blumlein Science fiction/horror/fantasy writer and medical doctor Michael Blumlein died at 71. His last work was the novel Longer. [more inside]
posted by doctornemo at 1:05 PM PST - 11 comments

Spin The Guardian CBC Wikipedia Rolling Stone links the first two singles "The Goal" "Happens To The Heart" A collection of previously unheard Leonard Cohen material will be released as Thanks for the Dance, an album described by representatives for the late songwriter as “an unexpected harvest of new songs” and “a continuation of the master’s work”. [more inside]
posted by dancestoblue at 12:55 PM PST - 5 comments

Economic Growth Shouldn't Be a Death Sentence for Earth - "But it does mean learning how to do more while using fewer resources."[1,2] (thread-reader) [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 2:34 AM PST - 65 comments

The Big Lebowski Cremation Urn. You'll probably have to make it yourself. Here's how. [more inside]
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 10:20 PM PST - 21 comments

Ms. Pac-Man’s Revenge by Soleil Ho [Eater]

“Why has food, which is arguably an essential part of our day-to-day lives, been so marginal in so many games? It could be due to ingrained assumptions about their intended audiences: If these products were meant to appeal to men, why waste effort on rendering food when one could focus on more masculine motifs, like monsters and spacecraft? And yet, one of the earliest examples of game developers’ thinking outside of the box and bringing food to the forefront is one of the earliest games: Pac-Man.”

In an essay for the anthology “Women on Food,” restaurant critic Soleil Ho wonders if gender has something to do with the lack of food in video games
posted by Fizz at 6:52 PM PST - 46 comments

"The Gothtober Countdown Calendar™ is an annual curated time-release autumnal symposium showcasing 31 works by 31 different contributors. Behind each numbered day waits a new Halloween treat for you!" It's like an Advent calendar except it's spoopy and has videos rather than chocolate. Is thirty one videos not enough? Dig into the archive for sixteen past years of Gothtober! [more inside]
posted by ardgedee at 6:10 PM PST - 6 comments

Dorothy Ashby was an African-American jazz harpist who revolutionized the harp as a respected instrument of improvisational jazz, by proving that the harp was just as adept at bebop and hard bop as the saxophone or piano. Less well-known than fellow jazz harpist Alice Coltrane, Ashby's first album, The Jazz Harpist, was released in 1957 - more than a decade before Ms. Coltrane's own album debut. Yet Ashby remains "one of the most unjustly under-loved jazz greats of the 1950s." [NPR] This post is a brief overview and introduction to her musical contributions. [more inside]
posted by nightrecordings at 4:27 PM PST - 11 comments

Be careful where you put your camera, or they might get nabbed. raccoon steals camera and throws it into water; squirrel steals camera and takes it into the treetops; a different squirrel takes a camera into the trees, but the lens is facing its fuzzy tummy; bald eagle steals camera, and we get to see the world fly by through talons; lioness takes camera, with a narrator; crab slowly approaches camera, and takes it off; young otters steal ottercam; sea lion steals camera, and plays with it a bit; octopus takes a camera on an ocean adventure. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 2:21 PM PST - 21 comments

You’ll never walk alone Oh, it won’t come to that, surely?” This is a phrase I’ve heard many times in the last three years. It’s uttered by friendly, cultured, open-minded people in my town – the sort of people who woke up on the morning of 24 June 2016 blinking in disbelief at finding their values outvoted. Since that day, they’ve reassured themselves that the fracture in our society can be reversed, as if a pane of glass can be talked out of the crack in it, as if a burst balloon can be made to see that staying intact is the best thing all round. (SLGuardian) [more inside]
posted by mumimor at 10:49 AM PST - 29 comments

2 Proud Boys Sentenced To 4 Years In Prison Over Gang Assault In New York (HuffPost) YouTube removed one of the most prominent video news outlets for white nationalists, Red Ice, from its platform. (SPLC) “ News of Jarrett Smith’s arrest rattled the far-right ecosphere on the encrypted messaging app Telegram. Smith, an American soldier, was known in those circles as Anti-Kosmik 2182. One day before his arrest, he’d unwittingly shared his bomb-making expertise with an FBI agent on the app undercover.” How Telegram Became White Nationalists' Go-To Messaging Platform (Vice) I watched Fox News every day for 44 months – here's what I learned (Guardian) 8chan Is Trying To Come Back As ‘8kun.’ Its Founder Is Trying To Stop It. (HuffPost) Meanwhile the current owner of 8chan is posting ...handwritten notes online (Twitter)
posted by The Whelk at 10:48 AM PST - 15 comments

The history of pockets isn’t just sexist, it’s political
posted by Mrs Potato at 10:34 AM PST - 24 comments

Like the universe, IKEA feels infinite. IKEA is a place of transition, a journey, a source of light and comfort, but also strife. (H/T to Dan Hon on Twitter)
posted by boo_radley at 10:25 AM PST - 11 comments

The Codevilla Tapes: The historian of American statecraft and spycraft and conservative political philosopher Angelo Codevilla talks about the ruling elite, Jonathan Pollard, and the rise of the techno-surveillance state—and the consequent demise of the American Empire

Angelo Codevilla is interviewed by David Samuels for Tablet Magazine. Sections include: The Ruling Elite, The Rise of the Surveillance State, Are Assange and Snowden heroes or villains?, When Jeff Bezos Has Dinner With the CIA, Henry Kissinger Meets the Demon Emperor, The Progressive High Church Mass, The Cruxification of Jonathan Pollard, and Secrecy and the Rule of Law.
posted by save alive nothing that breatheth at 9:46 AM PST - 7 comments

Russian scientists tracking migrating eagles ran out of money after some of the birds flew to Iran and Pakistan and their SMS transmitters drew huge data roaming charges. [SLBBC]
posted by KTamas at 7:33 AM PST - 10 comments

Seattle radio-show-turned-podcast Too Beautiful to Live recently celebrated reaching its 3000th episode with a nationwide tour, ending up in Brooklyn where they talk to special guest John Hodgman (audio). They discuss Hodgman's new book Medallian Status, about his journey to the dizzying heights of an airline rewards program, his appearance on an episode of the Flight of the Conchords television series, and something even more dreadful than modern air travel.
posted by LURK at 6:43 AM PST - 5 comments

The composer Anna Meredith MBE has released Fibs, the second album of music written for her touring band, a follow-up to 2016's Varmints. [more inside]
posted by Grangousier at 5:10 AM PST - 8 comments

An oral history of Chuck E. Cheese's and its weirdo animatronics.
posted by Chrysostom at 9:56 PM PST - 41 comments

In 1978, Takashi Yanase, beloved among children for his Anpanman character, wrote a picture book about a lamb who swears revenge on the wolf who killed his mother, and therefore goes to the very same wolf to learn to become a killer himself. Later the same year, Sanrio (yes, the people who make Hello Kitty) adapted it into a 47 minute-long film. "Chirin’s Bell is like if, instead of Bambi being raised by his father after the death of his mother, he sought out the hunters who killed his mother and insisted they teach him how to use a gun. Or if Simba, instead of running from Scar after his father’s murder, decided to join Scar in his conquest of the Pride Lands. Because, that’s basically what happens in this movie!" [more inside]
posted by J.K. Seazer at 6:17 PM PST - 18 comments

The Outer Worlds [YouTube][Launch Trailer] “Set in an unspecified future in which humankind has begun to colonise other planets, The Outer Worlds is easy to describe but in no way derivative. In essence, as a single-player, first-person action-RPG, it’s Fallout in space. There is a steampunk vibe, as well as art direction that harks back to 1950s sci-fi comics such as Dan Dare and The Eagle. But the look, feel and game world are distinctive and fully realised, and it addresses modern concerns, such as the disasters that happen when mega-corporations assume the role of governments. [...] What ensues is a delightful sci-fi romp with razor-sharp writing, lashings of humour and immaculately observed characters that put most game franchises to shame. The gameplay is well crafted, too.” [via: The Guardian] [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 4:56 PM PST - 93 comments

We've seen lots of Cats vs. Boxes, but not so much Cats vs. Flopping Fish Toy or Cats vs. Invisible Wall. No wonder Lulu has so much grooming to do.

Seasonal Bonus: A Catmare On Elm Street
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 3:48 PM PST - 17 comments

PG&E’s power shutoff in California shows the inequities of climate risks: But the highest tolls of this outage will be borne by the most vulnerable: People who depend on medical equipment at home, whose jobs will be closed, and who face food insecurity without refrigeration. [more inside]
posted by allkindsoftime at 2:22 PM PST - 112 comments

Homestuck 2 began today. [more inside]
posted by rorgy at 12:59 PM PST - 17 comments

Jonathan Ward posts in WFMU's Beware of the Blog, "In the late 70s (or early 80s?), the Rockford, Illinois Area Chamber of Commerce sponsored a songwriting contest for the locals. An LP was produced, funded by Pepsi...It's been one of my favorite 'civic pride' records since I came across it. My favorite moments are the new-wave-ish 'Making It In Rockford' and the sermon breakdown on 'Make It In Rockford…Weigh the Difference.' And the oppressive nature of the final, disco track... and the front cover photo collage... and the line 'Catch a smile on Whitman Bridge' from the first song..." [more inside]
posted by carrienation at 12:27 PM PST - 20 comments

If you missed it this summer, Drag Queen Story Time was targeted by white supremacists. They responded with some reading recommendations... and some snark.
posted by clawsoon at 11:39 AM PST - 12 comments

The growth of app-based gig delivery firms has opened up new ancillary markets - restaurants seeing their kitchens overwhelmed are turning to so called "dark" or "ghost" kitchens - kitchens with no attached dining space, catering to delivery orders. This move has even major chains looking to dive in, either by partnering with kitchen operators like the rather on the nose named Zuul Kitchens, or by opening their own, as Wendy's is planning. [more inside]
posted by NoxAeternum at 11:19 AM PST - 55 comments

Glacial rivers absorb carbon faster than rainforests, scientists find (The Guardian). "In fact, during the 2016 ablation season (a relatively low melt year), the glacial rivers in the Lake Hazen watershed consumed, on a per square meter basis, about half as much carbon daily [...] as the Amazon rainforest [...]. During the 2015 ablation season, when glacial melt was ∼3 times that in 2016, CO₂ consumption rates in the glacial rivers were, on average, twice that of the Amazon rainforest, with maximum daily rates of up to 40 times higher on a per square meter basis [...]." Original paper (PNAS, academic paywall). [more inside]
posted by biogeo at 11:16 AM PST - 14 comments

Inside the Great [Reddit] War of Tim vs. Tom
As thousands of non-Tims and non-Toms flooded into the warring subreddits, the two factions continued to battle. Paranoia spread, memes lit up the skies, olive branches were denied and both sides began reaching out to other name subreddits for allegiances. “After a thorough review of r/David, I deemed them worthy of an alliance with r/Tim,” Juzt_Tim says. “r/David hadn’t yet taken the side of the Toms and were looking for an ally.” (One might think r/Jim would be a natural ally to r/Tim, but the Jims seem to have their own issues going on — and eventually became a target themselves.) [more inside]
posted by Atom Eyes at 11:10 AM PST - 22 comments

Martha Stewart's eye-popping soup is but an amuse bouche for another Halloween-themed dish: feetloaf. Are feetloaves wholesome? Even the Hallmark Channel has a recipe. [more inside]
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 10:57 AM PST - 18 comments

"So if it’s hidden, and it could be hidden, it’s hidden really damn well, even from people who are on the inside." Whistleblower and patriot Edward Snowden digitally stopped by Joe Rogan's podcast on October 23. The interview is over three hours long and Rogan almost entirely hands over the microphone to Snowden, who offers a very detailed account of events both prior to and after his 2013 disclosure of the wide-reaching global surveillance programs. [more inside]
posted by Ahmad Khani at 10:39 AM PST - 30 comments

Video: Two Women Confronted Harvey Weinstein At LES Bar & Got Thrown Out (Gothamist) “ When contacted by THR, a representative for Weinstein said, "Harvey Weinstein was out with friends enjoying the music and trying to find some solace in his life that has been turned upside down. This scene was uncalled for, downright rude and an example of how due process today is being squashed by the public, trying to take it away in the courtroom too." The Hollywood Reporter. “ “Being in that space, I felt like the air was sucked out of my chest,” said Bachman. “I’ve literally had nightmares about running into Harvey Weinstein.-“ The Cut. This is not the first time this has happened at the venue. (Twitter) (CW/TW discussion of sexual assault)
posted by The Whelk at 10:14 AM PST - 36 comments

How Manhattan's City Bakery Crumbled, under weight of debts. Rachel Holliday Smith and Josefa Velasquez of The City delve into the usury and vulture capitalism that doomed one of New York City's iconic small businesses.
posted by Etrigan at 9:56 AM PST - 7 comments

No ordinary grandmas or snakes here. A group of snorkelling grandmothers who swim up to 3km five days a week have uncovered a large population of venomous sea snakes in a bay in the Baie des Citrons, Noumea where scientists once believed they were rare. (SLGuardian)
posted by wicked_sassy at 9:33 AM PST - 7 comments

There are 50 million songs on Spotify (Expanded Ramblings), but there are still generations of music locked on physical formats. Imagine if your favorite song or nostalgic recording from childhood was lost forever. This could be the fate of hundreds of thousands of audio files stored on vinyl, except that the Internet Archive is now expanding its digitization project to include LPs. Earlier this year, the Internet Archive began working with the Boston Public Library (BPL) to digitize more than 100,000 audio recordings from their sound collection. How the Internet Archive is Digitizing LPs to Preserve Generations of Audio (IA blog) [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 8:29 AM PST - 21 comments

Predict science to improve science "Last year, a huge group of researchers collaborated to try to replicate the results of some very famous social science research. They determined that only 62% of the studies found similar results when they were repeated. But the researchers found something else intriguing: other scientists were astonishingly good at guessing which of the results would replicate. Does that mean we can just ask scientists for their hunch on what research is robust? It's a lot more complicated than that, but predictions could have a useful role to play in science (paywalled, but see this), and new projects are springing up to make use of them."
posted by dhruva at 8:06 AM PST - 21 comments

The American Dream Mall is opening tomorrow in the former swamp near the Meadowlands in New Jersey. Originally called Xanadu, the building Governor Chris Christie once called "the ugliest damn building in New Jersey, and possibly America" is set to open with a Nickelodeon theme park, an indoor ski slope [photos], and the largest indoor water park in the western Hemisphere. But will anyone come?
posted by Mchelly at 7:50 AM PST - 43 comments

My artwork was about appropriation. San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum tried to appropriate it. Indian American artist Chiraag Bhakta on his experience with the SF Asian Art Museum. When I was asked to contribute to the Asian Art Museum's exhibit on yoga, I took the invitation at face value: The Asian Art Museum wanted to give space to an Indian American artist. I knew the title #WhitePeopleDoingYoga would be provocative, but I chose it for a reason: For this installation, yoga was a case study in how culture gets colonized, a pattern that holds across industries, from fashion to food to music. But once my proposal made the rounds among curators, educators, and PR folks, cracks started to show in the museum’s support for the installation.
posted by stillmoving at 6:49 AM PST - 46 comments

Can 200 women make it through 16 stalls in a 20-minute intermission? [more inside]
posted by hilaryjade at 5:52 AM PST - 69 comments

Kyle Chayka at Vox reconsiders Iceland's tourist boom. "While traveling in Iceland this spring to talk to Icelanders about the boom and subsequent slowdown, however, I began to doubt the concept of overtourism itself. The stigma of overtourism is contingent on the sense that a place without as many tourists is more real, more authentic, than it is with them. It poses tourists as foreign entities to a place in the same way that viruses are foreign to the human body. From the visitor’s side, overtourism is also a subjective concern based on a feeling: It’s the point at which your personal narrative of unique experience is broken, the point at which there are too many people — like yourself — who don’t belong in a place.
posted by adrianhon at 2:13 AM PST - 28 comments

Re.sort by Sora
Originally released in 2003 (on CD only), conceived by Sora aka Takeshi Kurosawa. Re.sort is a miracle of Japanese electronica. Widely unknown but very necessary. Fragments and textures playfully flirt with each other, bossa nova and jazz records float in the air, an old phonograph sits by the sea. Leftfield that feels like a home away, where joyful nothings are everything. Sweet minimalism and micro melodies.
posted by Going To Maine at 1:18 AM PST - 6 comments

WHO just declared another polio virus strain eradicated. For polio to be fully eradicated, all three wild polio strains — types 1, 2, and 3 — need to stop circulating. The three strains all cause the same horrible symptoms, including paralysis and death, but are virologically distinct. Type 2 was eradicated back in 2015; the last case of type 3 polio surfaced in northern Nigeria in 2012 and the virus hasn’t been seen since. A poliovirus can be considered eradicated if it hasn’t been detected for three years. “[The eradication of type 3 polio] is a significant achievement that should reinvigorate the eradication process and provides motivation for the final step — the eradication of wild poliovirus type 1,” said David Salisbury, chair of the independent Global Commission for the Certification of Poliomyelitis Eradication, in a statement Thursday. Today, only type 1 remains at large — in Afghanistan and Pakistan. If it’s eradicated, polio will join smallpox as the only two human scourges wiped off the face of the planet. (A third disease that’s been eradicated, rinderpest, is spread mainly in cattle.) And today’s news is a step in that right direction.
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 9:46 PM PST - 13 comments

The Honeywell 800, an obscure 1959 computer, has infected the definition of CPU for 60 years with the irrelevant phrase “Special Register Group.” Ken Shirriff (Previously restoring a Xerox Alto) investigates.
posted by larrybob at 8:29 PM PST - 25 comments

Eat your heart out: native water rats have worked out how to safely eat cane toads

Australia’s water rats, or Rakali, are one of Australia’s beautiful but lesser-known native rodents. And these intelligent, semi-aquatic rats have revealed another talent: they are one of the only Australian mammals to safely eat toxic cane toads... The rats, which can grow to over 1kg, are the only mammal found to specifically target large toads, neatly dissecting the toads to eat their hearts and livers while avoiding the poisonous skin and glands.

[more inside]
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 6:08 PM PST - 22 comments

"35 years ago a Christian rock band encoded a Commodore 64 program on a vinyl album, and this YouTuber managed to retrieve and run it." Robin Harbron runs the 8 Bit Show and Tell YouTube channel and has a lot of Commodore 64 (and 128) videos. This one is his latest.
posted by jessamyn at 4:15 PM PST - 23 comments

A New, Ever-Complicated Era of Frank Ocean Is Upon Us [Vulture] “Is Frank Ocean circling album mode again? In the last five days, the Blonded team rolled out a new party, a new radio mix, a new single, a bounce remix of Blonde’s “Nights,” [Soundcloud] and more. Co-produced by German house DJ Boys Noize, Ocean’s new “DHL” [YouTube] is a psychedelic floss track rooted in the cryptic swag rap of 2016’s Endless. The lyrics range from devilishly conceited (“Niggas think it’s new, it ain’t new, boy / Old files just turned two, yeah / Still sound like it’s coming soon, yeah”; “Independent juug, sellin’ records out the trunk / I’m already rich as fuck, so the product’s in the front”) to mysterious (“This ain’t no fuckin’ hopes and dreams prophecy / How’d he sleep? Faith is in the coffee bean”) to just plain horny (“Boy toy suck me like a Hoover / Boy toy ride me like an Uber”).” [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 4:03 PM PST - 4 comments

The 20 defining comedy sketches of the past 20 years by Elahe Izadi in the Washington Post. [Content Warning: sketch comedy, exclusively from US TV, doesn't always age well, mostly SNL]
posted by chavenet at 1:59 PM PST - 87 comments

“Because the paper beds of banknote presses in 1860 were 14.5 inches by 16.5 inches, a movie industry cartel set a standard for theater projectors based on silent film, and two kilobytes is two kilobytes” is as far back as I have been able to push this, but let’s get started. MeFi's own mhoye dives 2500 words deep into the history of terminal aspect ratios.
posted by cgc373 at 1:17 PM PST - 62 comments

Scabby the Rat is a familiar feature on the sidewalks of New York (though its origins are in Chicago). But in recent months, the National Labor Relations Board is filing court briefs arguing that the rat constitutes "illegal picketing," reversing a long tradition under which the rat was recognized as protected free speech. Word on the street is: it's personal. What does Scabby think? Follow them on Twitter to keep up to date. [more inside]
posted by Miko at 11:13 AM PST - 28 comments

Lýdia Machová talks about her experience doing a TED talk. And here's the TED talk in question, on learning languages.
posted by nangar at 11:00 AM PST - 3 comments

Disney Is Quietly Placing Classic Fox Movies Into Its Vault, and That’s Worrying
More than one exhibition professional contacted for this article speculated that Disney’s overall goal is to claim as many screens at a theater as possible for its newer titles, even if some of them are packing the house but others are selling just a handful of tickets per show. A former theater manager for a major chain, who asked not to be identified in this piece, says, “It seems short-sighted, you know? But they do it, I think, just to keep a Sony title out, to keep a Universal title out.” The Fox freeze out, he speculates, may be an extension of that tactic: Disney considers any screen that’s taken up by an older movie, even one that’s owned by Disney, to be a screen that could be showing the new Marvel or Star Wars title instead. Or showing Orangutans 4 to an audience of three.
posted by Atom Eyes at 10:24 AM PST - 61 comments

"Given how long we’ve relied on the work of critics on film, music, food, and much else besides, as well as the ever-increasing relevance of cities in our lives, it’s time we recognised city criticism as its own distinct category of writing. But what is city criticism — or rather, what isn’t it?" 'A way of learning from everything': the rise of the city critic. [more inside]
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 10:17 AM PST - 8 comments

“Von Spakovsky, a member of the Trump-Kobach “election fraud” commission, urged GOP lawmakers to use citizenship data to redistrict state legislatures rather than count the total populations of districts, the latter being the constitutional standard for U.S. House districts and the longtime norm for states, as well. Most state legislatures, however, could redistrict state legislative lines based on citizen population, in most cases simply by passing a statute. (Recent revelations from the files of late GOP redistricting mastermind Thomas Hofeller demonstrated that Republicans attempted to place a citizenship question on the 2020 census to gather citizenship data for this purpose.) “All of you need to seriously consider switching to using citizen population to do redistricting,” he said, asserting that the concept of “one person, one vote” was just something that liberal justices on the U.S. Supreme Court “created … out of whole cloth.” How to Get Away With Gerrymandering (Slate) Rigging the Vote : The Intercept’s 3 part investigation into the network of lobbyists, lawmakers, and financiers that push partisan gerrymandering. Supreme Court tosses challenge to Republican-drawn Michigan electoral maps. (Reuters) ( previously )
posted by The Whelk at 9:59 AM PST - 13 comments

Warning: this story is about death. You might want to click away now. That’s because, researchers say, our brains do their best to keep us from dwelling on our inevitable demise. A study found that the brain shields us from existential fear by categorising death as an unfortunate event that only befalls other people. (Ian Sample, The Guardian)
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 9:57 AM PST - 43 comments

The next US administration has the chance to strike the greatest climate bargain of all time. For less than $3/ton of CO2 abated, the next US government could economically retire the nation’s coal plants and buy back the planet’s future – all while saving US consumers billions. (Jules Kortenhorst, RMI)
posted by flabdablet at 9:34 AM PST - 9 comments

Button Shy Games is a small board game publisher, in many senses of the word "small" -- most of its games are "wallet games", consisting of just 18 cards (some require tokens and dice, which the buyer is expected to furnish). That wasn't minimalist enough for Button Shy publisher Jason Tagmire, who has started a monthly 18 Card Challenge, each of which puts an additional restriction on the 18-card rule. The first month's restriction: Create an 18 Card Game Where Every Card Is Identical. Tagmire and friends winnowed 228 entries down to 20 finalists (27-minute YouTube video), which show amazing ingenuity in how much information you can pack onto one standard-sized card -- or how little you need to. [more inside]
posted by Etrigan at 8:08 AM PST - 10 comments

Ten years ago, Judge Paul Herbert [...] noticed a trend. He was seeing lots of women who were abused and forced into sex work, but they were being treated like criminals. "The sheriff brings the next defendant out on the wall chained up," Herbert says, "and it's a woman and she's all beat up, she's looking exactly like one of these victims of domestic violence except she's in handcuffs and a jail suit. I look down at the file and it says prostitute." Herbert realized the law didn't recognize these women as victims of human trafficking. So he pitched the idea of a courtroom dedicated to recovery, not punishment. It's called CATCH Court, which stands for Changing Actions To Change Habits. A Pioneering Ohio Courtroom Helps Trafficking Victims Find Hope (NPR) [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 8:08 AM PST - 13 comments

Counting jail, prison, probation, and parole, Pennsylvania now has the nation’s second-highest rate of people under correctional control. We found a system that routinely punishes poverty, mental illness, and addiction. We met a woman who was jailed two months for failing to report to probation because she wasn’t permitted to bring her newborn child and couldn’t afford a babysitter. We met a man who was locked up because he didn’t have $227 to pay for a court-ordered drug evaluation. As a result, some people remain under court control for years after being convicted of low-level crimes, resentenced two, three, four, or five times over for infractions including missing appointments, falling behind on payments, or testing positive for marijuana.
posted by xingcat at 6:53 AM PST - 7 comments

The saga of WeWork in the past few months has been a strange and infuriating one, even for financial markets. Starting from a crazy August IPO filing which contained ten pages detailing how then CEO Adam Neumann was a risk to the company, to the collapse of the company's value and cancelation of the IPO, leading to Neumann's ouster as CEO. But Neumann has had the last laugh, as his position with "superowner" stock options giving him oversized control of WeWork has allowed him to force investor SoftBank to buy him out with a golden parachute worth $1.7B, at a time when WeWork doesn't even have the funds to perform necessary layoffs. [more inside]
posted by NoxAeternum at 6:46 AM PST - 75 comments

Meet the new A.I. that knows you better than you know yourself: https://stealingurfeelin.gs [more inside]
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 6:28 AM PST - 14 comments

Facebook and Speech: It's All About Power - "As long as there is one Facebook algorithm, one Twitter algorithm, one Instagram algorithm, etc. that will always be way too much power in one place. We all need to be able to programmatically interact with these services." [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 11:42 PM PST - 30 comments

“It’s just a big illusion”: How homeopathy went from fringe medicine to the grocery aisles Homeopathy is a $1.2 billion industry in the US alone, used by an estimated 5 million adults and 1 million kids. It’s become such a staple of America’s wellness industry that leading brands such as Boiron and Hyland’s are readily available at high-end health-focused chains like Whole Foods and Sprouts, supermarkets like Ralphs, and superstores such as Walmart. Analysts project that the global homeopathic market will grow 12.5 percent by 2023. [more inside]
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 9:26 PM PST - 79 comments

North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un has visited the Mt Kumgang resort, ordering the project promoted by South Korean President Moon Jae-in and US President Trump to be razed, denouncing the buildings as 'just a hotchpotch with no national character at all'. Mt Kumgang's Haegumgang Hotel was the brainchild of a Queensland property developer in 1987, and originally floated on the Great Barrier Reef. It is commemorated in model form in the Townsville Maritime Museum.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 5:50 PM PST - 10 comments

Not especially famous, long-open problems which anyone can understand. A MathOverflow thread.
posted by escabeche at 4:31 PM PST - 16 comments

Crusader Kings 3 [YouTube][Annoucement Trailer] “Crusader Kings 3, the next installment of Paradox Interactive’s grand strategy franchise, is arriving next year on PCs — via Steam and Xbox Game Pass for PC. Paradox shared the news this weekend at its annual PDXCON gathering for fans of the publisher’s game. Crusader Kings 3 is highlighting cunning, calculating, scheming and all sorts of other Saturday-matinee adjectives as chief components of the player’s drive to build their medieval dynasty. [...] Now celebrating its 15th year, the Crusader Kings franchise has taken a million players through an endlessly rewritten history of Europe in the Middle Ages. The most recent game in the series launched seven years ago — Crusader Kings 2, strictly for PC, in 2012. Paradox recently made that title free for everyone via Steam in observance of the PDXCON festivities. [via: Polygon]
posted by Fizz at 3:25 PM PST - 33 comments

"New reporting underlines how the scooter boom has proven popular with consumers and investors alike, but remains far from having a sustainable business model." The scooter boom is hot with fundraising, and people who believe that they're the future of urban transit, but a reports in The Information (Paywalled) shows that Lime is losing $300 million on revenues of $420 million. Why? Part of the problem is that their scooters don't last long enough to make a profit. How long do they last? About 28 days, at least in Louisville.
posted by SansPoint at 2:14 PM PST - 85 comments

A video of mom and her son riding an adaptive skateboard has gone viral on the interwebs this week. It's a great video with a smiling kid and devoted mom, but Lau Patron wants you to know the real story behind the video. (Single link twitter thread)
posted by vespabelle at 2:07 PM PST - 13 comments

"As an expat living in Canada, the more I live here, the more I'm convinced I'm actually stuck in some kind of cryptic horror nightmare country that's subtly and slowly eating away at me." [SLTwitterThread; Threadreader version]
posted by KTamas at 1:56 PM PST - 141 comments

"If you're interested in cuneiform writing, you'll be pleased to hear that the major cuneiform symbol groups have been assigned blocks in Unicode," says Robert Mesibov, a data auditor and retired zoologist in West Ulverstone, Tasmania, Australia. "There are also online resources for everyday computer users who want to learn more about cuneiform and the cuneiform-using cultures. The Open Richly Annotated Cuneiform Corpus (ORACC) project not only welcomes new participants, but is also strong on FOSS and open data."
posted by cgc373 at 12:56 PM PST - 8 comments

"I’ve talked to people who feel they know Bach very well, but they aren’t aware of the time he was imprisoned for a month. They never learned about Bach pulling a knife on a fellow musician during a street fight. They never heard about his drinking exploits."
posted by clawsoon at 12:32 PM PST - 31 comments

“When the rude masses began arriving from Eastern Europe, the WASPs got paranoid that they were, to use the phrase chanted by the rioting Nazis in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017, about to be “replaced.” They turned on their former class siblings, the German Jews, with whom they’d once shared the upper rungs of American society. As the nineteenth century turned into the twentieth, many old-line WASPs embraced a toxic mix of social Darwinism and eugenics.” To Serve Is To Rule: On WASPs and the longing for a more polite ruling class. (Harper’s)
posted by The Whelk at 9:38 AM PST - 14 comments

Katrin and Janine do an eating tour of New Orleans vis-a-vis a shot-for-shot copy of a Simpsons Episode (s.29 ep.17). There are some good stills here. The attention to detail is impressive. [more inside]
posted by Gorgik at 8:14 AM PST - 9 comments

The Booker Prize (one of the most prestigious literary awards in the English-speaking world) is pay-to-play, and that's not even the worst part, as the publisher of Lucy Ellmann's sprawling and singular Ducks, Newburyport tells us.
posted by Etrigan at 8:05 AM PST - 41 comments

What’s lost isn’t always lost. Sometimes a researcher sifts through a dark corner of a storage unit and uncovers a forgotten artifact. It’s been happening a lot in Philadelphia, of all places.... Cambridge University fellow Jason Scott-Warren posted on his blog that the Free Library of Philadelphia’s annotated copy of the First Folio was once John Milton’s (previously on the blue). And then a South Philly t-shirt shop found and restored the mannequin (WMMR) from Mannequin (trailer on YouTube). But was it really Emmy? Kim Cattrall tweeted that, no, the mannequin on display was a fake. Dan McQuade unraveled the mystery for Jezebel, which, for one week, took over his life.
posted by filthy light thief at 8:01 AM PST - 9 comments

OluTimehin Adegbeye, writing for The Correspondent: "People die violent deaths in both the US and Nigeria – why do I fear it there and not here? Where people have little power, they become more vulnerable." [more inside]
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 7:51 AM PST - 2 comments

California tribes are breaking the law to maintain their traditional ways of life. [more inside]
posted by poffin boffin at 6:58 AM PST - 4 comments

Lapis lazuli is a deep-blue metamorphic rock that has been prized since antiquity for its intense color.
By the end of the Middle Ages, lapis lazuli began to be exported to Europe, where it was ground into powder and made into ultramarine, the finest and most expensive of all blue pigments. It was used by some of the most important artists of the Renaissance and Baroque, including Fra Angelico.
Shades of blue on wikipedia.
Via localstain
posted by growabrain at 5:25 AM PST - 18 comments

Sauron’s hegemonic collapse holds potent lessons for the Trump administration. (Austin Gilkeson for Foreign Policy Magazine) “Oct. 21 is, of course, the 65th anniversary of the U.S. publication of one of the classic examinations of Mordorian strategy. Mordor’s downfall can be traced to three primary failings, all of which the Trump administration is also currently facing. The administration would do well to study the Red Book of Westmarch (now in the public domain), The Notion Club Papers, and other ancient texts related to Mordor.” [more inside]
posted by mwhybark at 5:11 AM PST - 28 comments

At their board meeting tonight, the Toronto Public Library upheld a decision to allow transphobic hate activist Meghan Murphy to host an event, despite widespread protests from the community, a 6,000 signatory petition spearheaded by authors who will boycott the library, a potential ban from Pride Toronto, and criticism from the mayor of Toronto. [more inside]
posted by Conspire at 8:26 PM PST - 68 comments

NBC News reporter Adiel Kaplan is no stranger to FOIA requests, and the odd results that they might return. But a recent request of theirs was puzzling, as it included an inexplicably redacted watermelon. (SLTwitter) [more inside]
posted by NoxAeternum at 5:37 PM PST - 6 comments

Northern Ireland will legalize same-sex marriage and decriminalize abortion. Regulations for free local abortion services will be in place in Northern Ireland by March 31, 2020; same sex marriage licenses on January 13. While abortion was decriminalized in England in 1967 and marriage equality passed in 2013; the legislation did not extend to Northern Ireland. The End of Northern Ireland's Restrictive Laws Won't Undo the Trauma, but It Will Help the Hurt.
posted by dinty_moore at 5:28 PM PST - 12 comments

Chatwin was the internet if we imagine that the internet could be a better version of itself; that it could meet a certain ideal that may well have existed, whether explicitly or in some Platonic heaven, when it was invented was just a few short months after Chatwin’s death, but with which any regular internet user must have long-since grown disillusioned. Dril, by contrast, is a great realist: he gives us the internet as it appears.
posted by chappell, ambrose at 4:29 PM PST - 25 comments

Both states are considering banning abortion at 6 weeks. In South Carolina, state senators held a subcommittee hearing on Tuesday on House bill 3020, which, like the Pennsylvania bill, would ban abortion after a heartbeat can be detected. On Tuesday, the subcommittee voted to advance the bill to a full committee hearing. The members also voted to strip an exception for rape and incest from the bill. [more inside]
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 3:31 PM PST - 15 comments

Unpacking [YouTube][Gameplay Trailer] “Unpacking is a puzzle game about moving your possessions into a new home. And by “your,” I mean “somebody else’s.” By unpacking and arranging objects—all of which click and clack oh-so-satisfyingly—you’ll gain “a sense of intimacy with a character you never see and a story you’re never told.” It’ll be out next year.” [via: Kotaku]
posted by Fizz at 2:26 PM PST - 32 comments

Understanding the Anthropocene Extinction From CBC's Quirks and Quarks "But when it comes to animals, there's also been a major shift, from wild to domestic. Milo said our planet now has 20-fold more biomass in domesticated livestock like cows, pigs and sheep than in all the wild mammals — like elephants, caribou and whales — combined. And there are twice as many domesticated birds as there are wild ones"
posted by helmutdog at 2:14 PM PST - 4 comments

The white bellbird sings its pile driver tune when a potential mate is nearby. It starts facing away from her, and then whips around to blast the loudest, record-setting note right into her face. [SLNYT]
posted by ohkay at 12:15 PM PST - 17 comments

"It's our right to impose ourselves on that land and use that land so it benefits us," Floyd says. "It made sense to turn [the lots] into a community garden because you don't have any fresh food around here." Community gardens beautify urban space, but some seek to transform urban society. (Chicago Reader) Oyster reefs are making a comeback–by protecting coasts from the ravages of climate change (CNBC) “ For birds, soil organisms, small mammals, and bees and butterflies, prairie strips also provide much-needed food and habitat. As the benefits of regenerative practices like these are made increasingly clear, the pressing question has become: What would it take to get more farms to use them?” Planting Native Prairie Could Be a Secret Weapon for Farmers (Civil Eats)
posted by The Whelk at 9:19 AM PST - 21 comments

Kate Lacour is a cartoonist and artist whose work is bloody, funny, gross, and beautiful (Content Warning). [more inside]
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 8:45 AM PST - 7 comments

What's the Difference is a mailing list and archive run by Brette Warshaw. Each issue explores the difference between similar things: tomatoes; eggs; pasta; uncooked flesh; salts; Catholic places of worship; law enforcement officers; sandwiches; wetness falling from the sky; Broccolis; and many more
posted by dobbs at 7:54 AM PST - 15 comments

A Swedish engineer's umbrage at a traffic ticket has led to a six-year legal fight and now a global change in the speed with which traffic light signals are timed. [more inside]
posted by Etrigan at 6:54 AM PST - 86 comments

How Amazon.com moved into the business of U.S. elections - "Amazon.com Inc's cloud computing arm is making an aggressive push into one of the most sensitive technology sectors: U.S. elections." [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 5:38 AM PST - 30 comments

Stones/Water/Time/Breath is a participatory sound art piece composed you can perform anywhere there is a body of water. Composed by experimental musician Dean Rosenthal.
posted by Miko at 5:27 AM PST - 20 comments

An unprecedented climate change lawsuit against American oil giant Exxon Mobil is set to go ahead in New York. "Exxon's trial on the fraud claims will start on Tuesday and is expected to last 15 days. Former US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who led Exxon for a decade, is among those likely to appear in court." E&E News article. InsideClimateNews article. CBS. [more inside]
posted by Not A Thing at 1:07 AM PST - 11 comments

EVERY YEAR WE GET TOGETHER AND MAKE SALMON FOR TOAST, EVERY YEAR WE GET A CROCKETY BLOAT, EVERY YEAR WE GET DRUNK ON THE DOCKS, AND EVERY YEAR WE HAVE SEX WITH OUR CAPS LOCKS!!!!
posted by eyeballkid at 12:57 AM PST - 126 comments

Who needs adorable animal antics? You do! You can find little howlers at r/tinyawoos and lots of gamboling at r/Zoomies. [more inside]
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 10:42 PM PST - 13 comments

A slingshot and a fishing pole can get you 50-80 feet up, celebrating and exploring the last biotic frontier (NPR article and 8 minute video), just like Dr. Nalini Nadkarni, forest ecologist and a science communicator (The Evergreen State College), and her DIY (ESC) TreeTop Barbies (New York Times). When she's not in the treetops or promoting science and education to young people, she may be bringing life science to prisoners (5 minute TED Talk). [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 10:18 PM PST - 5 comments

The latest (and final?) trailer for "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker"
posted by computech_apolloniajames at 7:19 PM PST - 281 comments

“blur” A man sees his father’s life through blurred photographs. YouTube.
posted by ColdChef at 7:14 PM PST - 1 comment

Allen Ginsberg on the day after Kerouac died, and on the day of his funeral. Bill Tremblay's poem on the funeral. Jack Kerouac, gone fifty years ago today.
posted by Capt. Renault at 5:31 PM PST - 13 comments

Continuing his series on the Alt-Right Playbook (previously, previouslyer), Ian Danskin now focuses on the means by which the alt-right recruits new members, from bringing them into the fold to leading them down into the depths of the movement. (SLYT)
posted by NoxAeternum at 4:34 PM PST - 8 comments

David Perell writes: "The actual story of the 737 Max crash begins with that McDonnell-Douglas purchase in 1997, 21 years before the first accident in late 2018. Unfortunately, media coverage of the crash mostly ignores Boeing’s corporate history. " [more inside]
posted by jenkinsEar at 1:31 PM PST - 73 comments

Lynn Nolan explains: “All of the buildings, bar the Miner’s Arms and Eyam Tea Rooms, are made from individual bricks which are no bigger than an inch long. There are lights inside the buildings, which allow you to see the glasses in the pub and the sweets in the shop through windows, which are made out of gelatine sheets.” Lynn spent three months recreating Eyam (pronounced “Eem”) using over 50 different cakes and eight litres of whisky, baked by residents of the Derbyshire village (tinkly music video). How to make a church. Previous constructions include Youlgrave, made out of Christmas cake, icing and marzipan, and Bethlehem, made out of 36 whisky-soaked cakes.
posted by Wordshore at 12:55 PM PST - 12 comments

Nowadays, professionally, I am extremely conscious of this sort of style choice or convention, trying hard to ensure it's consistent across the team, organization, or better yet with the rest of the broader community. At the time, though, I was programming basically alone, and idiosyncrasies, like this mistaken naming convention, could persist for years. 3500 words from Li Haoyi, "a software engineer, an early contributor to Scala.js, and the author of many open-source Scala tools such as the Ammonite REPL and FastParse," describing a 300-line version of Asteroids he wrote when he was fourteen.
posted by cgc373 at 12:22 PM PST - 7 comments

"Bartleby is referred to again and again in court records, where he is not evoked as a signal of ambiguity but reduced instead to pure obstacle: a bad citizen whose intentions cannot be surmised. There is no room in law for something beyond logic, because rational explanation is the key to argument." In I Would Prefer Not To, Your Honor, Daniel Tovrov looks at references in the American judicial system to Herman Melville's infamously noncompliant Bartleby. Bartleby may primarily be referenced as a flattened symbol of insubordination, but he's also present as a symptom of a flattening system. [more inside]
posted by mixedmetaphors at 11:12 AM PST - 15 comments

For My Incarcerated Clients, There Is No Winning by Peter Borenstein [The Marshall Project] [more inside]
posted by readinghippo at 10:48 AM PST - 8 comments

Michael Lewis profiles federal government worker Art Allen: “I’ve only thought about one problem in my life,” said Art, with an odd little laugh, which sounded half like a chuckle and half like an apology for speaking up. “Which is how to improve Coast Guard search and rescue.” [more inside]
posted by Homeboy Trouble at 10:17 AM PST - 25 comments

Around the world, there’s a battle of storytelling about migrants and Muslims. Populists are winning Because it’s a contest of storytelling, the sworn enemies of the populists are people like me: writers and journalists. Truth tellers, writes Suketu Mehta.
posted by Mrs Potato at 8:47 AM PST - 8 comments

Someone's been replacing the dustcover of former British PM David Cameron's memoirs with their own far superior version (SL Guardian).
posted by Paul Slade at 8:27 AM PST - 16 comments

As of 7am Pacific Time, polls are open across Canada for what looks to be one of the closest and least predictable elections in Canadian history, one which, unlike many previous elections, probably won't be decided until the last votes are cast on the west coast. This is as good a time as any to remember that day in 1849 when elite mobs burned down Parliament but were peaceably defeated by the first government in the British Empire to be responsible to a democratically elected Parliament. [more inside]
posted by clawsoon at 7:00 AM PST - 384 comments

For those of a more progressive worldview, however, a nation is also an ideal, the land being merely the body beyond which there is a “soul” of a nation. This is certainly true of Britishness, which has developed into something far more than a physical country, let alone an ethnic group. Britishness has become a sort of idea – and a very profitable one at that. from Harry Potter and the importance of soft power in by Ed West in UnHerd
posted by chavenet at 5:25 AM PST - 15 comments

A self-taught crab enthusiast is doing something remarkable — breeding land hermit crabs in her home.
posted by Etrigan at 4:56 AM PST - 12 comments

The Politics of Succession - "Succession is all but overtly inspired by the Murdoch family, whose multi-continental media empire played a crucial role in making Donald Trump's presidency possible." [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 1:01 AM PST - 19 comments

What happens when a robot that was specifically designed to make its owners love it shuts down?

Jibo is dying.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 10:24 PM PST - 72 comments

Despite the fact that the kudzu-like Phytolacca americana (Wikipedia) sprouts up all across North America, poke sallet, a dish made from the plant’s slightly-less-toxic leaves, is a regional thing, popular only to Appalachia and the American South. The leaves must be boiled in water three times to cook out their toxins, and, as aficionados will tell you, it’s well worth the extra effort. But if pokeweed is so toxic (DoveMed), why did people start eating it in the first place? In a word, poke sallet is survival food. (Saveur) [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 9:36 PM PST - 22 comments

We all know that seagulls are one of the two types of birds. But how much do we really know about gulls? The Seattle Times’ Sandi Doughton takes an in-depth look at gulls and the experts who study them. [more inside]
posted by mbrubeck at 7:39 PM PST - 22 comments

October 20th 2019 marks 30 years since the release of Nine Inch Nails' album Pretty Hate Machine [full album, 48m48s]. Known as Halo Two (the second release in the NIN canon), this album continues to find new fans even today. Side A: Head Like A Hole [video, the single for this track is Halo Three], Terrible Lie, Down In It [video, the advance single for this track is Halo One, the video shoot attracted the attention of the FBI], Sanctified, Something I Can Never Have [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 5:38 PM PST - 40 comments

Trump Writes Unhinged ‘Legal’ Letter Demanding That CNN Pay Him Money (New York magazine) [more inside]
posted by box at 10:29 AM PST - 45 comments

But their protest came at a price: A girls’ high school soccer team in Vermont made a statement in favor of equal pay for men and women in sports during a game on Friday...
posted by dfm500 at 8:31 AM PST - 11 comments

"One way that mass strikes, and even things that look a lot like general strikes, have happened in recent memory is basically a mass wildcat. People get upset and walk off the job, i.e. they vote with their feet. Some union officials may become de facto leaders and be put in a position to negotiate terms (provided the leadership did not oppose the strike action and lose legitimacy in the eyes of the strikers)". A Blueprint toward a general Strike . What is a general strike?
posted by The Whelk at 1:49 AM PST - 13 comments

Are you looking for a skin-like case that allows you to pinch your smartphone? Search no more. From the folks who brought you the smartphone with a finger that crawls across the table to stroke your wrist.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 8:30 PM PST - 81 comments

Blair Witch [YouTube][Game Trailer] “Blair Witch, the video game, is terrifying. Developed by Bloober Team, the studio behind Layers of Fear, Blair Witch is a mosaic of modern tropes culled from the most nightmarish horror games of the past decade. It has a camcorder mechanic, a lot like Outlast; it uses a flashlight as a demon deterrent, à la Alan Wake; it uses puzzles to push the story forward, like Resident Evil; and, at least in one section, it places the player inside a maze-like house with cramped, shifting hallways, similar to PT. This is all wrapped up inside another familiar franchise, and sprinkled with Bloober Team's flair for frenetic psychological thrills. The end result is a comforting kind of horror game. It's familiar in some ways, and therefore inviting, but there's still a violent and mysterious monster lurking in the trees, behind the door, down the hall. And when it pounces, the panic is immediate.” [via: Engadget] [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 6:42 PM PST - 10 comments

"Swedish pop was dominated by roving bands in garish costumes until Abba changed everything. Benny Andersson now leads one of those groups." [NYT] Benny Anderssons Orkester (Benny Andersson's Orchestra, BAO) went on tour this past summer. Here they are performing ABBA's song On And On And On, their own songs Story Of A Heart and Fait Accompli. Also, here's 18 minutes from one of this summer's shows [edited, good stuff]. All videos are amateur audience videos, but generally pretty watchable. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 3:49 PM PST - 9 comments

"Tell [the judge] to do what she has to do, or else she'll end up like Kuciak." The February 2018 murder of journalist Ján Kuciak and his fiancée Martina Kušnírová, which led to massive street protests and the subsequent election of the former grassroots environmental activist Zuzana Čaputová as president of Slovakia. The investigation of the murder continues to expose new layers of judicial and political corruption. [more inside]
posted by Not A Thing at 12:44 PM PST - 5 comments

Hillary Clinton claims Russians are Grooming Tulsi Gabbard for a third-party run. Gabbard's response: "Great! Thank you @HillaryClinton. You, the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long have finally come out from behind the curtain. From the day I announced my candidacy, there has been a concerted campaign to destroy my reputation. We wondered who was behind it and why. Now we know — it was always you, through your proxies and powerful allies in the corporate media and war machine, afraid of the threat I pose. " [Gabbard previously] [more inside]
posted by benzenedream at 9:39 AM PST - 446 comments

Durham, NC's famous (and infamous) 11' 8" Bridge, which has devoured numerous roofs of vehicles whose drivers failed to regard the ample warnings, will soon be no more, as the Durham Transportation Department has announced that the overpass is being raised.
posted by NoxAeternum at 9:07 AM PST - 74 comments

Santiago wakes up under martial law. Chile, widely viewed as Latin America's most politically stable country, has been shaken up by what started as basically a flash-mob style Metro tourniquet jumping spree, as a protest by students against recent price hikes. [more inside]
posted by signal at 8:05 AM PST - 65 comments

Security researcher Ophir Harpaz discovers how exactly the "x people are looking at this flight right now" notifications on OneTravel work: by using a random number generator [threadreader].
posted by Vesihiisi at 6:02 AM PST - 52 comments

Have I Got News for You and Mock the Week invite audiences to laugh at what they don’t have the gumption to change.

"'Poetry', wrote WH Auden, 'changes nothing'. Satire is worse than poetry: it has made us a nation of giggling couch potatoes, laughing at what we don’t have the gumption to change." (SLGuardian)
posted by Pinback at 4:12 AM PST - 47 comments

I honestly have no idea what compels someone to become a funeral director. I can't imagine many high school career counselors hear that one. In your case, this was a family business, but you could have done anything. Instead, you chose to comfort the brokenhearted. You chose a profession where you see people at their weakest and most vulnerable. During the times where we are so lost we have literally no idea how we will behave. Some sit stone still, others rage. Some cry, others are in denial. Families fight in front of you, bringing up old, unnecessary wounds when all that should be done is to write the obituary and get it into the paper.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 7:44 PM PST - 49 comments

Lindsay Ellis speaks at the XOXO Festival about lessons she's learned for managing online harassment.
posted by wabbittwax at 6:12 PM PST - 25 comments

Luigi's Mansion 3 [YouTube][Game Trailer] [Overview Trailer][JP]“Luigi’s Mansion is one of those series that seemingly came out of left field. When it was announced that Luigi would be getting his own star role for the GameCube launch, people were dubious. What came was nothing like any Mario game before it, and it has stuck with fans ever since, albeit through scattered releases and easter eggs in other Mario franchises. So when a full-console third installment was announced last September, people lost their minds. Luigi's Mansion 3 has that Nintendo polish we know and love: The mansion is gorgeous, the character animations are stylized, and the music is unbelievably good. While it may not scare you like Resident Evil or The Last of Us, there is still some low-level eeriness. So if you're too old for trick-or-treating and too chickenshit for other horror games, this is the perfect pick for your Halloween gaming.” [via: Esquire] [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 5:33 PM PST - 7 comments

Playing Deadliest Catch: The Game on medical speed. A newly-diagnosed ADHD patient describes writing on a deadline with new meds. Come for the fantastic advertisement of just how great appropriate mental health treatment can be, but stay for the Bon Jovi theme running throughout.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 1:51 PM PST - 20 comments

The Trouble with the County Winner Map, and why this Muddy Map is better for determining vote populations and vote margins in the US election.
posted by agentofselection at 12:33 PM PST - 22 comments

On the north shore of Lake Tahoe, Patricia Maloney, a UC Davis forest and conservation biologist, hunts for these [climate] survivors. Most people focus on the dead trees, their brown pine needles obvious against the glittering blue of the lake. But Maloney tends not to notice them. "I look for the good," she says. "Like in people, you look for the good, not the bad. I do the same in forest systems." [...] "Evolution is a tool that we can bring to bear in helping us get through this future," says Steve Palumbi, a biology professor at Stanford University, who has been looking for coral that can handle heat. Boosting natural resilience: studying the trees that survived California drought and coral that withstand higher water temperatures, and then helping them propagate (NPR). [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 12:26 PM PST - 5 comments

The matter of Trump receiving emoluments has come under scrutiny, especially for stays at his DC hotel and due to his declaration that the 2020 G-7 meeting will take place at Trump Doral Resort. [more inside]
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 11:30 AM PST - 146 comments

An interview with Theodor Bergmann, "the last participant and eyewitness to the German labor movement of the Weimar era."
posted by clawsoon at 9:32 AM PST - 6 comments

“ Obamanauts have a passion for office and state, a calling for power distilled of all impurities. Pfeiffer may have wanted to help Obama “achieve his place in history,” but his ultimate intention in the White House was to serve “not just my president but the presidency itself.” Even so, theirs is an agile sense of service that bends to more self-serving claims. Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes says that after 9/11 he was so compelled by patriotism—and repelled by the New York left’s “preemptive protests against American military intervention” and “reflexive distrust of Bush”—that he made the trek uptown to talk to an Army recruiter under the Queensboro Bridge. After giving the matter some thought, he decided that army life wasn’t for him; he could better serve his country by joining a think tank in DC.” The memoirs of Barack Obama’s staffers, considered (Dissent)
posted by The Whelk at 8:41 AM PST - 29 comments

One Rothko per hour
posted by Etrigan at 7:53 AM PST - 52 comments

Lizzo boosts flute sales as classical music has renaissance on Instagram - "The Detroit-born star has amassed more than 265,000 fans on her flute playing Instagram account @Sashabefluting (named after her flute she calls Sasha Flute)."
posted by kliuless at 6:42 AM PST - 10 comments

Last month, Pizza Hut rolled out a calzone shaped like a Cheez-It, a square cracker with a cheddar flavour, and, in August, KFC released a fried-chicken sandwich stuffed with Cheetos, puffy cheese-flavoured crisps.
The BBC takes a delve into the world of viral fast food-cum-snack creations that "inspire curiosity, attention and disgust wherever they go".
posted by Vesihiisi at 5:22 AM PST - 52 comments

Chill out this Friday with visuals in various styles illustrating Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier book 1. (SLYT Playlist) [more inside]
posted by Wrinkled Stumpskin at 4:15 AM PST - 8 comments

this video of paul rudd demonstrating how he takes pictures of celebrities and makes his hand look like a butt is hovering over them is more valuable than anything you'll ever learn in school (link to Tweet) [more inside]
posted by Caduceus at 10:19 PM PST - 52 comments

“A spiritual experience”: The artist behind a rediscovered Last Supper sculpture talks about its creation. [more inside]
posted by peeedro at 4:12 PM PST - 10 comments

Sea Salt [YouTube][Game Trailer] “I am a dark God; my tendrils writhe beneath the waves, and altars to my magnificence are spread across the land. I seek worship, but, more importantly, I need flesh. When the time comes for my devoted archbishop to sacrifice himself, he refuses and flees behind the paltry defense of the city walls. He has mistaken my call for a request, and now I must claim him — and anyone who stands in my path. I will feast. [ ...] It’s best summarized as Hotline Miami, except I’m an angry sea god instead of a nihilist in a mask. I also gather and manage minions in a way that’s a little like Pikmin, but for goths. I have to navigate through levels seen through a top-down camera, and use my 2D pixel-art armies to visit unfathomable violence on the enemies and obstacles in my way.” [via: Polygon]
posted by Fizz at 3:07 PM PST - 22 comments

Sports statistical dorks Jon Bois and Alex Rubenstein have a video and print pairing of baseball statistical oddities. On the video side, we have a discussion of Brandon Guyer, the Hit By Pitch God, who turned the beanball into a weapon. Then in print, they discuss how 2019 was the Year Of The Dinger, with an additional loving roasting of the Baltimore Orioles for being the recipient of so many.
posted by NoxAeternum at 12:41 PM PST - 18 comments

The Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk's resident historian recounts the immediate aftermath of the 1989 Loma Prieta quake on the seaside amusement park and adjacent retirement home Casa Del Rey, as well as how it was rebuilt. [more inside]
posted by subocoyne at 12:05 PM PST - 18 comments

Craig Silverman at Buzzfeed breaks down the anatomy a intricate fake ads on social media scam. He gives some of the highlights in a thread on Twitter. [more inside]
posted by 3j0hn at 9:35 AM PST - 49 comments

San Francisco is now home to the world's tiniest comic shop. Not only is it the world's tiniest, at 71 square feet, it's also devoted solely to "local artists, women, and people of color."
posted by Slinga at 8:55 AM PST - 9 comments

U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings of Baltimore, a committee chairman known for his devotion to Baltimore and civil rights and for blunt and passionate speechmaking, died of longstanding health problems early Thursday morning, his office said. He was 68 years old (Baltimore Sun). "In the Congress, Elijah was considered a north star," Pelosi said. "He was a leader of towering character and integrity." She added, "He lived the American dream, and he wanted it for everyone else." (NPR) More remembrances on the Baltimore Sun, and Elijah's story, from his campaign site.
posted by filthy light thief at 8:40 AM PST - 136 comments

The UK's Natural History Museum has unveiled its Wildlife Photographer of the Year winners. Yongqing Bao won the adult award for The Moment, his shot of a Himalayan marmot being surprised by a Tibetan fox. Cruz Erdmann won the youth award for Night Glow, a colorful shot of a bigfin reef squid.
posted by Etrigan at 7:51 AM PST - 25 comments

In some Rust Belt communities, broadband access is provided by the municipal government. [more inside]
posted by hilaryjade at 6:17 AM PST - 34 comments

By 2050, there could be more plastic than fish in the sea. Ten tons of plastic are produced every second. Sooner or later, a tenth of that will end up in the oceans. Coca-Cola says it wants to do something about it - but does it really? (YouTube link)
posted by flabdablet at 4:21 AM PST - 39 comments

In 1928, successful American jazz bandleader Sonny Clay took his big band, billed as Sonny Clay's Colored Idea, on a tour of Australia. They played in Sydney and Melbourne and were well received by audiences, though throughout their tour, were followed by police detectives. Then, on 25 March, Victoria Police raided an apartment in East Melbourne where some of the musicians were staying, finding several members of the band in the company of five local women. An attempt to charge the women with vagrancy failed, leaving the musicians free to go, but their subsequent reception in Sydney was frigid, with hotels denying them accommodation. Meanwhile, the federal government cancelled their visas, and instituted a policy of barring entry to Australia to black musicians, which remained in effect until 1954.
posted by acb at 3:20 AM PST - 25 comments

"Here it is again," she thought. "Someone else that has my life right in their hands and is able to make these decisions for me. Here it is again. Someone again forcing my hand to do something I don't want to do when it involves sexual stuff." So she made a decision. From The real (and fake) sex lives of Bella Thorne [BBC] [CW: abuse, depression, revenge porn, deepfakes, Disney. Link may be NSFW for language.] [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 2:25 AM PST - 12 comments

NPR's podcast Hidden Brain recently completed their 2019 edition of their series, You 2.0. Across six episodes, it explores ways people might be able to improve themselves and break old patterns to move into renewed progress in their lives. Episodes run from around 30 minutes to around an hour. Episode 1 is The Empathy Gym [53m] "On this episode of Hidden Brain, we talk about calibrating our empathy so we can interact with others more mindfully." [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 9:52 PM PST - 9 comments

"I don't think I need to forgive you, because I understand what happened. He and I were like two rocketships on the same trajectory, from different directions. He had been raised and trained in an environment that caused him to react exactly like you would expect a human being to react, given his training and environment. I was doing exactly the same thing, reacting exactly how I was trained. To me it was almost inevitable what had happened. I don't need to forgive him. If he wants it, if that's something that would be of value to him, I would give it." Ear Hustle, the podcast featuring inmates at San Quentin State Prison in California, talks about forgiveness. CW: graphic descriptions of violence. The Victim Offender Dialogue program as mentioned in the show.
posted by Evilspork at 6:43 PM PST - 12 comments

These Desert Ants Gallop at a Blistering 108 Body Lengths Per Second "Just how quick these iridescent arthropods can be, and how they achieve those speeds, is explained for the first time today in the Journal of Experimental Biology (paywalled). Saharan silver ants can travel at 108 body lengths a second, the researchers found. This makes them one of the fastest known running species, bested only by the California coastal mite and the Australian tiger beetle."
posted by dhruva at 6:38 PM PST - 18 comments

...and all content will be permanently removed. Users won't be able to upload new content to the site after October 21 and have until December 14 to archive their content, Yahoo said in an announcement.
posted by clawsoon at 4:18 PM PST - 72 comments

Andrea Long Chu, On Liking Women:

The truth is, I have never been able to differentiate liking women from wanting to be like them. For years, the former desire held the latter in its mouth, like a capsule too dangerous to swallow. When I trawl the seafloor of my childhood for sunken tokens of things to come, these bus rides are about the gayest thing I can find. They probably weren’t even all that gay. It is common, after all, for high school athletes to try to squash the inherent homoeroticism of same-sex sport under the heavy cleat of denial. But I’m too desperate to salvage a single genuine lesbian memory from the wreckage of the scared, straight boy whose life I will never not have lived to be choosy. The only other memory with a shot at that title is my pubescent infatuation with my best friend, a moody, low-voiced, Hot Topic–shopping girl who, it dawned on me only many years later, was doing her best impression of Shane from The L Word. One day she told me she had a secret to tell me after school; I spent the whole day queasy with hope that a declaration of her affections was forthcoming. Later, over the phone, after a pause big enough to drown in, she told me she was gay. “I thought you might say that,” I replied, weeping inside. A decade later, after long having fallen out of touch, I texted her. “A week ago, I figured out that I am trans,” I wrote. “You came out to me all those years ago. Just returning the favor.”

[more inside]
posted by JimBennett at 2:54 PM PST - 15 comments

On the eve of a(nother) crunch European Council on Brexit, negotiations on a possible deal are ongoing in Brussels. [more inside]
posted by roolya_boolya at 2:39 PM PST - 480 comments

2500 Classic MS-DOS Games Are Now Free To Play [Internet Archive] “The Internet Archive has been building a growing collection of old PC games over the years, with a batch of DOS games added in 2015, and Windows 3.1 games in 2016—all of them playable in your browser. This month another update has hit the collection, and now 2,500 more games (often with their manuals) have been preserved for the ages. Highlights of the latest set include Street Fighter 2, The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard, Loom, The Lost Vikings, Magic Carpet Plus, Robotron 2084, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Queen of Krynn, King's Quest 1 and 2, The Lords of Midnight, The Incredible Machine and its sequel, the first three Bard's Tale games, and plenty more.” [via: PC Gamer]
posted by Fizz at 2:32 PM PST - 51 comments

"There is arguably nothing more human than the alphabet, given that language, and particularly written language, often tops the list of qualities which distinguish our dear species most distinctly from others. To form the letters of these alphabets using the human body is then, perhaps, not so strange a leap..." (links 1 & 2 potentially NSFW). [more inside]
posted by misteraitch at 1:33 PM PST - 5 comments

WHALEFALL! NOAA's Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary’s exploration vessel Nautilus has “just discovered a whale skeleton on the seafloor covered in bone-eating worms, cusk eels, and octopus devouring this massive deep sea meal.” You can watch live, with commentary by the Nautilus team, who are also taking questions.
posted by Kattullus at 1:00 PM PST - 28 comments

This past Monday morning at 8:05 AM EST, the Twitter account for Disney's forthcoming Disney+ streaming service posted a tweet saying, "It. Is. Time." [more inside]
posted by Ipsifendus at 12:34 PM PST - 97 comments

Tarski's Plank Problem^1,2 asks for the least number of strips of width 1 that will cover a circular hole of diameter N. Though the strips are allowed to overlap, the configuration that will occur to most people is N parallel strips side by side, with no overlap and no gaps. But is this the best possible?

The middle strips in this configuration cover the most area, while the strips on the edge don't seem to pull their weight. Could a bunch of strips crossing the center in different directions do better? But the outer circumference also needs to be fully covered, and that's one thing "edge" strips do well. There's no obvious right way to measure each strip's contribution. It's a maddening little puzzle, whose resolution surprisingly lies in... [more inside]
posted by aws17576 at 12:07 PM PST - 13 comments

Cherrypicks is a movie review site based entirely on the reviews of female-identifying and non-binary voices. As women, we consume more than half the media in the world. And newsflash: we’ve also got opinions. That’s why we made CherryPicks, the best place to see what women think about movies and more. We create a unique score based on reviews from female-identifying and non-binary voices, so whether you’re looking for a night out, or a night on the couch, you know the opinions you trust come from women like you. The site also features race and representation-focused articles like In “Always Be My Maybe,” Asian American Men Play the Heartthrobs: Undoing the Damage of Long Duk Dong and review categories like “Moms in Horror” and “LGBTQ Coming of Age Stories”. [more inside]
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 11:10 AM PST - 24 comments

One Night at Mount Sinai: A star doctor drugs, then sexually assaults his patient. Aja Newman was dozing from the morphine. David Newman entered Room 8 and told her he was going to give her another dose. She objected. She had already been given morphine, she said, but the doctor was determined. ... “I’m like, ‘Wait. Whoa, whoa, whoa. This is not okay.’ And I am immediately concerned. I’m going under way too fast,” she remembers. But even then, it didn’t occur to her that David had any intention of harming her.
posted by MiraK at 11:06 AM PST - 26 comments

“ And the gap between the smallness of everything I could realistically do and the largeness of everything I wanted to happen was so immense. I was deeply pessimistic, intellectually. The time in which to transform the global economy in order to prevent untold death and destruction shrank daily, and the forces of reaction grew stronger just as fast. So I wanted to do something ambitious and hard: something commensurate with the monstrosity of the world, with the distance of utopia and the nearness of catastrophe. There was so much I wanted to change, so many people I wanted to move. In the daily struggle to build the union and beat the boss and the odds, I saw something I desperately wanted to learn.” Spadework : On political organizing (N+1)
posted by The Whelk at 10:19 AM PST - 6 comments

A history of Americans in K-pop and K-pop in America and a video series featuring three former K-pop stars making their American debuts. [more inside]
posted by storytam at 9:31 AM PST - 3 comments

Although Queen Victoria had been on the throne for over twenty years, the 14th December 1861 marked the beginning of the reign of the mourning Queen (Royal Central). After Prince Albert’s death, Queen Victoria decreed that everyone in the household had to appear in full mourning while on duty for two years and although official mourning for the Prince ended in 1863, women at court still had their wardrobes dictated by the Queen (Enough of this Tomfoolery blog), which influenced society at large and and abroad.... [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 8:33 AM PST - 6 comments

50 of the world's best breads
posted by Mrs Potato at 5:43 AM PST - 69 comments

Slate takes a look at some of the most important pieces of code (via Kottke)
posted by Stark at 4:31 AM PST - 37 comments

It began as a 1940s radio serial (which is soon to be the subject of a documentary film). This week it becomes a comic book which starts its run today.
posted by Paul Slade at 12:29 AM PST - 20 comments

The 2015 Swedish film Cirkeln (The Circle) wasn't well reviewed or received outside of its home country. But the story of six girls who discover witchery and bravery together was scored by none other than ABBA's Benny Andersson. Benny Andersson - Cirkeln is an hour of instrumental score with seasonally appropriate tones, and could be a welcome soundtrack during this season of haunting. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 9:29 PM PST - 3 comments

The Constitution Annotated: Analysis and Interpretation of the U.S. Constitution is a long-running project of the Congressional Research Service, now updated for the web, that "allows you to read about the Constitution in plain English…providing a comprehensive overview of Supreme Court decisions interpreting the United States Constitution." Until now, the Constitution Annotated "has primarily existed as a 3,000-page hardbound volume provided to Congressional members." If you're looking for a place to start browsing, here's a timely example. You can also browse by topic.
posted by Not A Thing at 9:01 PM PST - 8 comments

Death Discussions Some Alexandria Library patrons are browsing more than just books: these days they’re also checking out discussions about death.
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 8:25 PM PST - 7 comments

Be Kind Rewind is a fantastic youtube channel that features educational, entertaining, and perfectly paced video essays about the history of Hollywood, the Oscars, and a celebration of Best Actress winners. For example, about the only black woman to win Best Actress: "If we read the Oscars as a symbol of what Hollywood values, then Halle Berry's singular win says a lot about how much Hollywood values women of color generally." - #OscarsSoWhite and The Legacy of Halle Berry [more inside]
posted by BeginAgain at 4:36 PM PST - 4 comments

"In celebration of reaching 5,000 followers on Twitter (@No_Context_JTC) here are 50 images of sudden, horrible deaths in Chick Tracts."
Images 1-10 | Images 11-20 | Images 21-30 | Images 31-40 | Images 41-50
posted by Atom Eyes at 3:35 PM PST - 51 comments

When 69-year-old Marietta Jinde died in September 2016, police had already been called to her home several times because of reports of possible abuse. A detective described conditions at the woman’s home in Gardena as “horrendous.” She was so emaciated and frail that the hospital asked Los Angeles County adult protective services officials to look into her death. […] With permission from county officials and saying they did not know of the abuse allegations, employees from OneLegacy, a Southern California human tissue procurement company, had gained access to the body, taking parts that could have provided crucial evidence. [CW: descriptions of autopsies] [more inside]
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 3:19 PM PST - 44 comments

On October 15, the Democrats meet for the fourth time, starting at 8 p.m. ET in Westerville, Ohio, for a debate hosted by CNN and The New York Times, on the most crowded debate stage of this election cycle so far. [more inside]
posted by katra at 3:17 PM PST - 197 comments

Tremble. "An abstract dining room is the setting for Scottish Ballet’s largest film yet. Tremble stars 26 Scottish Ballet dancers and has been co-choreographed and directed by Jessica Wright and Morgann Runacre-Temple [of Jess and Morgs Films], set to Anna Meredith’s brassy track ‘Nautilus’ [previously]."
posted by homunculus at 3:15 PM PST - 13 comments

Solving Rubik’s Cube with a Robot Hand [YouTube] “We’ve trained a pair of neural networks to solve the Rubik’s Cube with a human-like robot hand. The neural networks are trained entirely in simulation, using the same reinforcement learning code as OpenAI Five paired with a new technique called Automatic Domain Randomization (ADR). The system can handle situations it never saw during training, such as being prodded by a stuffed giraffe. [...] Solving a Rubik’s Cube one-handed is a challenging task even for humans, and it takes children several years to gain the dexterity required to master it. Our robot still hasn’t perfected its technique though, as it solves the Rubik’s Cube 60% of the time (and only 20% of the time for a maximally difficult scramble).” [via: Open AI]
posted by Fizz at 2:03 PM PST - 8 comments

I’m Convinced We Found Evidence of Life on Mars in the 1970s The Labeled Release experiment on the Viking mission reported positive results, although most have dismissed them as inorganic chemical reactions.
posted by Bee'sWing at 1:07 PM PST - 12 comments

The 21 Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Book Series Ever
posted by bq at 12:58 PM PST - 285 comments

Joy, absurdity, and irreverence have long been in the DNA of the Tiptree Award. What other award crowns the winner with a tiara, raises money with bake sales, and serenades the winner? Now, our community has spoken and said: there is too much discomfort over this history for many of us to feel joyous about this name.

The Tiptree Motherboard has renamed the Tiptree to the Otherwise Award. [more inside]
posted by MartinWisse at 9:51 AM PST - 29 comments

“This is the most ambitious plan on corporate ownership ever put out by a presidential candidate,” Peter Gowan, with the Democracy Collaborative, an economic inequality-focused research institution, said. “[This is] giving real bones to Sanders’ vision of democratic socialism.” Bernie Sanders’s plan to reshape corporate America, explained (Vox) [more inside]
posted by The Whelk at 9:33 AM PST - 20 comments

Eric Tabuchi lives and works in Paris, and captured abandoned clubs around France (Design You Trust) in Discothèques, 2016. [via MltShp] Tabuchi has additional collections of stark and sometimes decaying features: symmetry in Ville Nouvelle, barriers in Restricted Areas, upright elements in Éléments verticaux, concrete poetry in Infrasculpture, stairways to nowhere in particular in Architecture d'entraînement, and a surprisingly large collection of Vertical Pools.
posted by filthy light thief at 8:28 AM PST - 10 comments

ShibaInuPunchan is a youtuber whose videos feature Purin the shiba watching their master cook. There are currently two dozen low-key videos without dialogue, only the sound of cooking and the sight of a handsome shiba inu with their head and forepaws propped up on the counter, calmly watching their master. Dishes include fluffy cheesecake, spaghetti with meat sauce, and omurice (Purin gets their own serving of this one). [more inside]
posted by ardgedee at 7:00 AM PST - 21 comments

Starting from the current tax system, everyone can design their own tax plan: Wealth tax, individual income tax, corporate tax... Pick the rates, adjust enforcement, and taxjusticenow.org shows: 1. How much revenue would be generated; 2. How tax progressivity would change." [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 6:28 AM PST - 44 comments

@RobotHugsComics has created a twitter thread [threadreader] full of great information on how to write image descriptions in twitter for those with visual impairments who are using text readers to engage with the site. It's full of in-depth tips on how to write image descriptions which will be useful for those who cannot see the images, in a way which makes them a part of the tweet content.
posted by hippybear at 9:02 PM PST - 15 comments

American Psycho [NSFW]

Yet American Psycho would not be a comedy unless Mary Harron set out to make it one. Her bravery and generosity may go unnoticed, but it was heroic work. Harron — working with a female screenwriter and frequent collaborator, Guinevere Turner — didn’t quiver in fear or cry her eyes out over Ellis’ misogyny. She simply refused to take it seriously. Ellis wrote a book about his pain and how it could only be assuaged by punishing women for being dumb bitches, and Harron, the director assigned to do this little manifesto justice, essentially rolled her eyes and made jerk-off motions at it for two hours. She didn’t just save us from Ellis’ awful book, she did the man himself a favor: In finding comedy where there was only self-pity, Harron gave American Psycho a better name and a more enduring place in the canon than Bret “No Good Female Directors” Ellis could ever manage for himself.

Black Swan
Us
Birdbox
(non-horror) Game of Thrones
posted by coolname at 7:51 PM PST - 57 comments

Catherine Fung for Dismantle Magazine: The Complicated Fun Of Being Into Historical Costume & Not White
posted by jedicus at 7:49 PM PST - 14 comments

Lakin Ogunbanwo photographs Nigerian women dressed for bridal ceremonies "to document the complexity of my culture, and counteract the West’s monolithic narratives of Africa and women." (SLNewYorker, here's a This is colossal link for those with paywall troubles.)
posted by smoke at 5:57 PM PST - 4 comments

On August 14, the Supreme Court of Hawai‘i recognized the constitutional obligation of the Hawai‘i state government to provide reasonable access to immersion language education in the Hawaiian language (‘ōlelo Hawai‘i), under Article X Section 4 of the Hawaiian Constitution. [more inside]
posted by Not A Thing at 5:30 PM PST - 6 comments

Fortnite Disappeared Over the Weekend [YouTube][Live] “On Sunday evening, more than 6 million people gathered online via streaming services such as Twitch and YouTube to watch the end of the world. Not our world, thankfully, but the world of Fortnite, which was sucked into a black hole, taking the whole game and all player characters with it. If you try to load Fortnite today, you’ll be presented with a blank screen. When developer Epic Games called the finale of Fortnite Season 10 “The End”, it wasn’t kidding. OK, before confused parents start celebrating, let’s be clear: Fortnite will be back, it’s just that Epic has closed out the first chapter of the game, which has amassed 250 million players since the launch of its Battle Royale mode in September 2017.” [via: The Guardian] [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 1:55 PM PST - 39 comments

Professor [Harold] Bloom (July 11, 1930 - October 14, 2019) was frequently called the most notorious literary critic in America. From a vaunted perch at Yale, he flew in the face of almost every trend in the literary criticism of his day. Chiefly he argued for the literary superiority of the Western giants like Shakespeare, Chaucer and Kafka — all of them white and male, his own critics pointed out — over writers favored by what he called “the School of Resentment,” by which he meant multiculturalists, feminists, Marxists, neoconservatives and others whom he saw as often betraying literature’s essential purpose. --NYT Obituary [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 1:26 PM PST - 50 comments

Megan Devine was a psychotherapist until the summer day in 2009 when she watched her fit, healthy partner Matt drown. All her professional experience felt meaningless in the face of tragedy. She quit her practice that day, and found that real help with grief was nearly impossible to find, so she created Refuge In Grief. She offers help for those who are grieving as well as those who know someone who's grieving.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 1:04 PM PST - 7 comments

Orange Grove Tool Sheds and Utility Boxes of Oliva, Spain [via mefi projects] [more inside]
posted by exceptinsects at 10:28 AM PST - 12 comments

Before science debunked the link between video games and real violence (Tallahassee.com), the concern that video games are detrimental to people, particularly youth, has come up again and again (Penny Arcade wiki entry on Jack Thompson). But before the heady days of video games in the homes, arcade games were corrupting the youth in the 1980s (Smithsonian Magazine), and before them, pinball machines were a source of moral decline (previously). But the fear of gaming didn't start there ... (The Conversation) [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 8:13 AM PST - 37 comments

QUITO, Ecuador (AP) — President Lenín Moreno and leaders of Ecuador's indigenous peoples struck a deal late Sunday to cancel a disputed austerity package and end nearly two weeks of protests that have paralyzed the economy and left seven dead. (Us News and World Report) Analysis: The empire strikes back in Ecuador, and what it means for Scotland (Common Space) Baghdad (AFP) - Iraq's deadliest wave of protests since the 2003 ouster of dictator Saddam Hussein has made the country vulnerable to a battle for influence between its two main competing allies, the United States and Iran, analysts say. (Yahoo) Crises in Iraq and Haiti Expose the Failure of Militarized Neoliberalism: American installed governments face opposition around the word (Common Dreams) Journalist's killing fuels ire of Haiti protesters (Euronews) “After an earthquake struck in 2010, the US pledged to help rebuild the Caribbean country. A decade later, nothing better symbolises the failure of these efforts than the story of a new port that was promised, but never built“ The Failure Of US Aid (Guardian)
posted by The Whelk at 7:53 AM PST - 7 comments

Frustrated by the dismantling of democratic norms and by increasingly transparent racism and authoritarianism, Hungarian voters dealt a major blow to Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán, unifying behind single opposition candidate Gergely Karácsony to retake the office of mayor in Budapest, along with wins that give them 10 of Hungary's 23 largest mayorships and 13 of Budapest's districts.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:44 AM PST - 14 comments

With Category Theory, Mathematics Escapes From Equality - "Two monumental works have led many mathematicians to avoid the equal sign. Their goal: Rebuild the foundations of the discipline upon the looser relationship of 'equivalence'. The process has not always gone smoothly." [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 6:09 AM PST - 40 comments

Irish man leaves a message from beyond the grave for his funeral. (Direct reddit video). (NSFW for Irish language)
posted by growabrain at 3:39 AM PST - 7 comments

Billy Reilly worked as a confidential source in counterterrorism for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, penetrating radical groups online with false identities. Then he disappeared. Wall Street Journal | The Journal Podcast
posted by peeedro at 9:27 PM PST - 15 comments

The four impossible “problems of antiquity”—trisecting an angle, doubling the cube, constructing every regular polygon, and squaring the circle—are catnip for mathematical cranks. Every mathematician who has email has received letters from crackpots claiming to have solved these problems. They are so elementary to state that nonmathematicians are unable to resist. Unfortunately, some think they have succeeded—and refuse to listen to arguments that they are wrong.
posted by Chrysostom at 7:10 PM PST - 80 comments

GQ's New Zealand correspondent files an excellent in-depth piece on the massacre of Muslim worshippers in Christchurch and the people it affected. "On March 15, when a white supremacist livestreamed his mass shootings of a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, a country with one of the world's lowest gun homicide rates was stunned to silence. But only momentarily. The deaths of 51 New Zealanders, mostly Muslim immigrants, would not be met with a tepid countermeasure but a swift, clear response. Sean Flynn reports from Christchurch about the day of the massacre—and the days that followed." [more inside]
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 4:15 PM PST - 8 comments

Elizabeth Warren Trolls Facebook With Ad Claiming Zuckerberg Supports Trump Sen. Elizabeth Warren is putting a spotlight on Facebook’s ad policies by turning the tables on the powerful social network. Following a week in which Facebook has been extensively criticized for its policy that allows politicians to lie in paid advertisements, Warren decided to place an ad of her own that makes false statements about Facebook and its chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg.
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 1:52 PM PST - 45 comments

Babushka Boi by A$AP Rocky [YouTube][Music Video] “Directed by Nadia Lee Cohen and inspired by Dick Tracy, the “Babushka Boi” video sees Rocky, A$AP Ferg, ScHoolboy Q, A$AP Nast and Kamil Abbas cast as Depression-era gangsters, wearing stylized facial prosthetics that exaggerate the cartoonish quality of the clip. But that’s nothing compared to the video’s villains – the cops – dressed up as anthropomorphic pigs. Rocky and his gang flee from the oinking feds after pulling off a heist, and their Looney Toons car chase eventually leads to a good old-fashioned shoot-out.” [via: Rolling Stone] [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 1:39 PM PST - 3 comments

• “How TikTok Holds Our Attention”, by Jia Tolentino for The New Yorker (Sep 23)
• “Revealed: how TikTok censors videos that do not please Beijing” and “TikTok’s local moderation guidelines ban pro-LGBT content” by Alex Hern for The Guardian (Sep 25/26)
• “Zuckerberg misunderstands the huge threat of TikTok” by Josh Constine for TechCrunch (Oct 1)
• “The not-so-secret life of a TikTok-famous teen” by Rebecca Jennings for Vox (Oct 2)
• “On TikTok, There Is No Time” by Louise Matsakis for WIRED (Oct 3)
• “48 Hours in the Strange and Beautiful World of TikTok” by James Poniewozik, Amanda Hess, Jon Caramanica, Gia Kourlas, and Wesley Morris for The New York Times (Oct 10)

posted by Going To Maine at 12:29 PM PST - 36 comments

What if We Nuke a City? Kurzgesagt YT 8:55
posted by Bee'sWing at 11:04 AM PST - 57 comments

When my identical twin, Julia, came to visit recently, I took her to my favorite café for a coffee and a waffle. For as long as I can remember, I’ve known that Julia is the extrovert and I’m the introvert, though I wouldn’t have used those terms when we were kids. Back then I’d have described myself as “quiet” or “happy by myself” or “hard to get to know” and Julia as the opposite. It’s part of the family mythology that this contrast was apparent from day one, as we lay in our incubators at the hospital. I was wrapped contentedly in my swaddling cloth, calmly observing my environs like a philosophical burrito. Julia had worked her way out of her confines and was energetically smearing her shit onto the perspex walls, batting her eyelids at the nurses and crowing with delight. [more inside]
posted by cynical pinnacle at 7:20 AM PST - 34 comments

Aude Konan, writing for OkayAfrica, lists twenty Black punk bands you need to listen to. [more inside]
posted by eotvos at 6:13 AM PST - 10 comments

Meet America's newest military giant: Amazon - "How the most powerful company in e-commerce positioned itself to become one of the world's biggest national security contractors." (via) [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 5:43 AM PST - 25 comments

With the population bitterly divided and only ten weeks left, the season of festive mystery meats, expensive toys, slightly cheaper toys, the 63rd Queen's speech, edible Colin and food for pets is thankfully (almost) here. This year the Yorkshire pudding wrapped Christmas sandwich will compete against the Yorkshire pudding wrapped turkey sandwich. Jodie has eight trees up (be nice) so it's time to stock up on marshmallow gin and mince pies. Lights are being turned on, claw-proof trees sold, ice rinks built, and advent calendars launched. Or head to Preston to experience Boyz on Block. Write your letters, view a display, put some Martin and Shirlie on the gramophone, be grateful for presents, drink your black forest hot chocolate then tuck in (more). post title
posted by Wordshore at 1:15 AM PST - 47 comments

"173 years ago this week, the United States government began the forced removal of Myaamia people from our historic homelands in the Wabash River Valley. On October 6, 1846, Myaamia people boarded canal boats near Iihkipihsinonki ‘the Straight Place’ (Peru, Indiana) and on the next day loading concluded near Kiihkayonki ‘Fort Wayne, Indiana.’ All told, in just over a month of forced travel, over 320 Myaamia people were moved via canals and rivers to Kanza Landing (Kansas City, Missouri) in the Unorganized Indian Territory. At least seven Myaamia people died on the journey and many more died over the following winter." [more inside]
posted by Not A Thing at 10:18 PM PST - 8 comments

When, some weeks ago, I was first contacted by an online scientific publication asking me to review a submission on the subject of “shit knives”, I initially thought it was a hoax or some kind of practical joke. On the face of it, I couldn’t believe that a team of scholars would take on the “shit knife” as a scientific challenge. I meant no disrespect, but at a time when the entire world of the Inuit is literally melting beneath them, I found it hard to accept that any serious scholar, even the most reductionist, would exhaust time and money in such a pursuit. [more inside]
posted by GoblinHoney at 6:21 PM PST - 32 comments

Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus, the male half of ABBA and composers for legendary (for various reasons) musical CHESS and renowned Swedish musical Kristina från Duvemåla composed the music for the 2013 hit theater production Hjälp sökes (Help Wanted). Here's a television filming of the musical from 2014 (in Swedish, no subtitles) [1h47m, plot summary in above article]. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 2:36 PM PST - 11 comments

Adam Green profiles British mentalist Derren Brown for the New Yorker.
posted by wittgenstein at 12:30 PM PST - 44 comments

“The fact that DeGeneres is so eager to make the case that her fancy friends can be ideologically different from her reminds me of a quote credited to Italian communist Antonio Gramsci that goes, “The historical unity of the ruling class is realized in the state.” Ellen DeGeneres’s George W. Bush Debacle Is a Lesson in the Drawbacks of Assimilation Politics (Teen Vogue) “No sooner did Shimunov’s video hit the internet on Tuesday afternoon than mass takedown notices began to appear, with claims of copyright infringement. And as history has proven time and time again, the more that somebody litigiously tries to prevent some devastating video from being seen, the more interest anyone has in it.” This remix of Ellen’s pathetic defense of George W. Bush is devastating (Fast Company)
posted by The Whelk at 10:19 AM PST - 120 comments

California finally bans forced arbitration at work. Millions of workers just won the right in California to sue their bosses. Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill Thursday that outlaws forced arbitration, a common business practice that US employers use to stop workers from suing them for sexual harassment, discrimination, and wage theft. He also signed a bill that extends the amount of time employees have to file workplace civil rights complaints under state law. Starting in January, businesses can no longer force workers to sign arbitration agreements, which are usually buried in the stack of hiring documents for new employees. These clauses, which are now common, require workers to waive their right to sue their employers for labor violations, discrimination, sexual harassment, and more. Instead, workers must resolve complaints through private arbitration, a quasi-legal forum with no judge, no jury, and nearly zero government oversight.
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 8:43 AM PST - 24 comments

"Massacre" is the title of this gallery of images from Tiananmen square in 1989. [CW: graphic content]
posted by ChrisR at 8:34 AM PST - 10 comments

Ben is a master luthier. He supports his art by teaching and making custom guitars by hand. A patron requested Grace Kelly's eyes on the fretboard. Ben also documents his personal projects. Crimson guitars.
posted by adept256 at 7:01 AM PST - 18 comments

"The call came in on the afternoon of Monday 7th October. Shane Balkowitsch would have little under 24 hours to plan a 15-minute wet plate photoshoot with Greta Thunberg at Standing Rock. Naturally, the first thing he did after getting off the phone was to start packing his studio up into the back of his truck — including his portable darkroom." (Shane Balkowitsch previously)
posted by octothorpe at 5:54 AM PST - 18 comments

Richard Dawson is a singer from Newcastle upon Tyne. Although his Wikipedia entry lists him as a folk musician, his music strays more widely than that - taking in punk, world music, hints of Captain Beefheart and Derek Bailey, possibly even progressive rock. His 2017 album, Peasant was Quietus' album of the year for that year. Each song tells a different story of someone living in the sixth century kindom of Bryneich (where Newcastly is now). Shot through with humanity and wit, they detail the minutiae of people's lives - “a panorama of a society which is at odds with itself and has great sickness in it, and perhaps doesn’t take responsibility – blame is going in all the wrong directions” as Dawson himself has put it. His new album, 2020, does the same for residents of Newcastle today. [more inside]
posted by Grangousier at 3:59 AM PST - 12 comments

Firefly Drone Shows are FAA Approved, Customizable, Precisely Choreographed Shows
posted by growabrain at 3:59 AM PST - 19 comments

After the US version (previously), the hyper-addictive game is back, this time challenging your knowledge of Europe.
posted by KTamas at 3:09 AM PST - 104 comments

Elvia Wilk, "Toward a Theory of the New Weird" (LitHub, 5 Aug. 2019), building on late 20th C. stories like Margaret Atwood's "Death by Landscape" (1990; PDF) and Kathe Koja's "The Neglected Garden" (1991): "Weirdness is a confrontation with the nonhuman. Weird knowledge does not deny the capacity of the human mind and body to produce knowledge, but it does not reduce the world to human subject experience either. Unlike science fiction—in which there is a rational explanation for everything—and fantasy—where magic explains it all—weirdness hovers between poles of explainability." [more inside]
posted by Wobbuffet at 2:10 AM PST - 6 comments

Eliud Kipchoge makes history by running sub two-hour marathon Kipchoge achieved the feat with a team of 41 in-and-out pacemakers, seven at a time, whose positions were guided by lasers projected on the road from a support car in front. These assisted conditions, and the fact the run was not part of an open event, mean his achievement will not count as an official world record.
posted by Mrs Potato at 1:36 AM PST - 31 comments

Suicide-murders, with suicidal people killing so that they themselves will be executed, fill the annals of early modern European history. So why didn’t the murdering misérables just kill themselves? At the time, a common religious belief held that “if you took your life, you had absolutely no chance of going to heaven,” says Jeffrey Watt, a history professor at the University of Mississippi. But if you killed someone else, you could repent before the execution and have your sins pardoned, he adds, shedding light on the murderous intent. Essentially, you’d have a better shot at getting past the pearly gates if you killed someone else rather than yourself. And children were the preferred victims because they were more easily dispatched, and because folks believed that their young, innocent souls were more likely to make it to heaven, Watt explains.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 11:04 PM PST - 32 comments

Robert Forster, resurgent Oscar nominee from Jackie Brown, dies at 78. [more inside]
posted by praemunire at 7:52 PM PST - 39 comments

"Stars were to my left, right, above and below me. The light of the sun was very intense..." In 1965 Alexei Arkhipovich Leonov (Алексе́й Архи́пович Лео́нов) was the first human being to walk in space. [more inside]
posted by doctornemo at 5:06 PM PST - 24 comments

October 9: Trump upset with Fox News reporting and polls; Attorney General Barr Meets with Rupert Murdoch (NYTimes). No one knows what they talk about. October 11: After 23 years, Shephard Smith suddenly steps down from Fox News (Daily Beast). [more inside]
posted by ZeusHumms at 3:20 PM PST - 58 comments

The video in the There is a city... post from earlier today included a brief shot of a palm tree. The city in question was Warsaw, so the sight of a date palm so far north is surprising. This tree, however, is an art project created in 2002 by contemporary artist Joanna Rajkowska called Greetings from Jerusalem Avenue as a memorial to Warsaw's Jewish community. [more inside]
posted by Greg_Ace at 2:39 PM PST - 3 comments

Can you draw a perfect circle?
posted by chavenet at 1:16 PM PST - 45 comments

PC Game Install Sizes Are Ballooning And I'm Scared [Kotaku] “Earlier today, I was reading over the PC hardware specifications for the upcoming Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and, when I reached the hard drive space requirement, did a double-take. 175 GB. For one game. My hard drive currently has less than half that space free for all games. And Modern Warfare is far from alone in its Galactus-like hunger for hard drive space. The PC version of Red Dead Redemption 2, for example, will not stop until it has callously conquered 150 GB of your PC’s storage. This continues an upward trend seen in other recent heavyweight kingpins like the PC versions of Gears of War 4, Gears 5, Halo 5, and Final Fantasy XV, all of which clock in at over 100 GB when you add high-res texture packs (the latter even without improved textures). PC gaming has always been characterized by a little extra pain in the name of optimal pleasure, but this is reaching preposterously bonkers proportions.” [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 1:13 PM PST - 81 comments

Experiments like this one have given social engineering a bad name. Nevertheless, Americans are imposing a kind of nepreryvka on ourselves - not because a Communist tyrant thinks it’s a good idea but because the contemporary economy demands it. The hours in which we work, rest, and socialize are becoming ever more desynchronized. Why you never see your friends anymore: Our unpredictable and overburdened schedules are taking a dire toll on American society.
posted by Evilspork at 12:48 PM PST - 31 comments

Since 2009, artist Margaret Nazon has been producing intricate, twinkling studies of planets, galaxies and nebulae as beaded artwork. [more inside]
posted by youarenothere at 12:33 PM PST - 3 comments

Ever groped for trout in a peculiar river? Know the difference between a quimstake and a dry mouthed widow? Slang is one of the most delightful things about the English language, and nobody knows this better than Jonathon Green, the author of Green's Dictionary of Slang and perhaps the foremost lexicographer of slang in the world. We asked Green to explain a few of the weirdest ones. If you want to do your own reading, Green hosts a helpful list of timelines of slang organized by topic. [NSFW]
posted by sciatrix at 12:06 PM PST - 7 comments

Case closed. Groundbreaking scientist Mahmoud Ghannoum has been telling the story for almost 30 years, how one generous act by a stranger in Washington, DC made his remarkable life possible. This stranger changed the course of an entire family’s life — and maybe even an entire field of science — thanks to his generosity that day.
posted by wicked_sassy at 10:35 AM PST - 12 comments

Forty-three new women came forward to describe assault and harassment by Trump. Newspapers ignored them. (Media Matters) Many mainstream news pundits have extravagant salaries, some are actual multimillionaires. Should they have to disclosure this when covering topics that impact their Wealth? (Baffler) “It’s no secret that historically, the struggles, victories, and concerns of the working class have rarely gotten the serious attention they deserve in our mainstream media. Instead, we are bombarded by reminders of the world that sits on top of ours and belongs to none of us: stories about celebrities, corporate America, and the exploits of the super-rich; squabbles between wealthy politicians; and an economy that is “booming” only for shareholders.” (The Nation ) Meanwhile, Twitter tips the scale toward incumbents by refusing the validate serious primary challengers (The Intercept)
posted by The Whelk at 9:44 AM PST - 27 comments

...that stops for one minute every year.
posted by jim in austin at 8:54 AM PST - 10 comments

Although the song "1-800-273-8255" (whose title is the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline phone number) didn't win a Grammy last year, it's part of a trend in pop music: an obsession with death.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 10:56 PM PST - 74 comments

If you don't already know The Association, perhaps a good introduction to them is their stellar third album Insight Out. The band grew out of the improbable music scene in LA centered around The Troubadour. Their blend of 60s "California Sound" rock and folk with light touches of psychedelia finally achieved chart success with this release in 1967. Side A: Wasn't It A Bit Like Now (Parallel '23), On A Quiet Night, We Love Us, When Love Comes To Me, Windy, Reputation [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 8:39 PM PST - 47 comments

9-eyes , Jon Rafman's blog of images from Google maps is back after resting for 5+ years. [cw: dead bodies, car accident scenes, etc.]
posted by dobbs at 8:18 PM PST - 30 comments

Since October 7, 1988 Emmanuel Goldstein and others associated with 2600.com have broadcast the weekly show "Off The Hook" from WBAI. Monday morning October 7, 2019 the station's parent organization Pacifica Foundation fired and locked out all WBAI employees, took over the WBAI domain which included show archives, and removed microphones and FCC mandated equipment from the broadcast studio. While a TRO was in place by Tuesday night, which should have allowed local programming to continue, on Thursday October 10, most of it was reported vacated. [more inside]
posted by Sophont at 4:48 PM PST - 30 comments

Some users of older Mac software are just now learning that their beloved apps — DragThing, for one example — won't work with Apple's latest operating system, Mac OS X 10.15 Catalina, which was released to the public on Monday after a customary period of beta testing. [more inside]
posted by emelenjr at 1:48 PM PST - 191 comments

The boundary wikipedia maintains between *unusual* units of measurement and *humorous* units of measurement is permeable and probably subjective; the rate of flow from one to the other might well be measured in miner's inches (Colorado, Arizona, or New Zealand standard). [more inside]
posted by miles per flower at 1:13 PM PST - 45 comments

More Dramatic Readings Of Video Game Patch Notes, Please [Kotaku] “We’ve all been there: Your favorite game drops a big update, and you’re desperate to find out what’s changed. Then you slam face-first into the wall of text that is the patch notes, and your enthusiasm deflates like a punctured whoopee cushion. Reading is a lot of work. What if someone could just read the patch notes for you? That’s the approach Supergiant Games’ narrative-driven roguelite Hades has been taking with its big updates, bolstered by a suitably story-centric twist. The game’s patch notes include a video of its disembodied narrator [voiced by Logan Cunningham @glancingonhuman] reading each and every word in a deliberate yet still dramatic tone.” [YouTube][Hades: The Superstar Update' Patch Notes]
posted by Fizz at 1:03 PM PST - 14 comments

Twenty years ago, a viral and long-lived PSA used the adorable menace of the Canadian house hippo [previously] to teach children not to believe that everything on television is real. Today, the house hippos return for an Internet age. This time, they're armed with resources, games, and basic strategies to teach critical thinking to people of all ages--and all nations.
posted by sciatrix at 12:03 PM PST - 30 comments

An Unusual Photo Series By Stefan Draschan
posted by Mrs Potato at 11:04 AM PST - 13 comments

This skeleton, known as “La Catrina,” is one of [José Guadalupe] Posada’s best-known calaveras: illustrations of skeletons, boldly drawn and thickly inked, and much more energetic and expressive than you’d expect, given their biological state. Although the figures have become closely associated with the holiday Dia de Muertos (Day of the Dead), Posada originally drew his calaveras as political cartoons, commenting on various issues of the day. (“La Catrina,” for instance, was meant to poke fun at early 20th century Mexican women who imitated European fashions.) The Endlessly Adaptable Skeletons of José Guadalupe Posada -- Calaveras created by the Mexican artist have been repurposed for generations, with wildly varying intent. (Atlas Obscura) [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 10:54 AM PST - 15 comments

You have your OkTubaFests and Octubafests and OcTUBAfests; really, it seems that most fall festivals aren't complete without a tuba component of some kind. As the holiday season approaches, the TubaChristmas phenomenon will begin to take hold for the 46th year in a row. Last year the Kansas City Symphony's TubaChristmas broke the world record for the largest tuba ensemble when they got 835 tuba, Sousaphone, euphonium, and baritone players together to play "Silent Night" all at once. If you prefer to listen to tubas in the summertime, the International Euphonium Tuba Festival will be held in June in Atlanta next year. *Bonus tuba-related content: An enthusiastic reporter accidentally drops his microphone into a sousaphone at a high school pep rally.*
posted by Tuba Toothpaste at 10:46 AM PST - 12 comments

Behind You is an ongoing series of illustrations made by illustrator Brian Coldrick since 2015. Each is a "one shot horror story," and although it's now collected into a book, they're so much better animated. A perfect way to get ready for Halloween. (previously)
posted by me3dia at 9:40 AM PST - 13 comments

“The truth is that while labor law reform remains critical to the future solvency of American unionism, nurturing the growing sense of class consciousness among today’s workers is more important than any single tweak to our labor code.” If “Industrial Democracy” Wasn’t Already Dead, Trump’s NLRB Just Killed It (Strike Wave) The Radical Guidebook Embraced by Google Workers and Uber Drivers : A book based on ideas associated with a labor group from the early 20th century has provided a blueprint for organizing without a union. (NYT) “Three days before President Trump signed the tax cut bill, in anticipation of then-chief officer Stephen Kramer’s promotion to C.E.O., the company’s Compensation Committee voted to increase Kramer’s compensation package to include a base pay of $408,500 and to make him eligible to receive more than $2 million in stock, in addition to a $510,625 bonus. Last year, Miss Mahin’s pay went up from $15 to $15.50 an hour, while my mother says she never got a raise.” Private daycares prepare children for success but often leave their employees behind (Harper’s)
posted by The Whelk at 9:28 AM PST - 9 comments

G/O Media to shutter Splinter effective immediately. [more inside]
posted by Ghidorah at 8:52 AM PST - 55 comments

Supernatural, in its own odd and unexpected way, has been the defining show of The CW. It’s never been the water-cooler series, generating heat for the network the way zeitgeist-penetrating shows like Gossip Girl, The Vampire Diaries, or Riverdale. And it’s never been a ratings juggernaut, pulling down record numbers like its superhero programming has done in more recent years. But what it has done is endured.
posted by Etrigan at 8:19 AM PST - 57 comments

The Secret Code of Capital and the Origin of Wealth Inequality - "Capital is not a thing, but a social relation enforced by the law and the state. With the right legal coding, any object, claim, or idea can be turned into a wealth- or capital-generating asset. In her new book, Katharina Pistor analyzes the evolution of capital over the past 400 years." [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 5:43 AM PST - 19 comments

Olga Tokarczuk and Peter Handke respectively. Tokarczuk was recently the subject of a feature in the New Yorker by Ruth Franklin called Olga Tokarczuk’s Novels Against Nationalism. Leland de la Durantaye wrote in 2014 about Handke’s career for the London Review of Books in an article titled Taking Refuge in the Loo.
posted by Kattullus at 4:09 AM PST - 37 comments

Cult Of The Party Parrot: solutions for all of your party parrot needs since 2016.
A history of the party parrot moment, from 2017.
The mystery of the emoji’s origins, resolved in 2018.
posted by Going To Maine at 10:17 PM PST - 19 comments

Thoughts of Dog, a.k.a @dog_feelings, (previously) tweeted a request today: today. is my stuffed fren sebastian’s second birthday. and to celebrate. we would like to see. all of your favorite stuffed frens

Many dogs responded with lovely stuffies.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 8:49 PM PST - 15 comments

There are treatments that work, but rehab facilities don’t have to use them. One family learned that the hard way. Michel estimates that he spent about $200,000 on treatments for his daughters over the next decade. His itemized tax deduction for “drug treatment facility and therapy” totaled $82,350 in 2009 alone. Most of the treatment facilities his daughters attended rejected evidence-based treatments and practices, but Michel — like many parents and loved ones — didn’t realize that at the time. [more inside]
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 7:46 PM PST - 79 comments

Justin Vernon and his collaborators share the origin story of "iMi" [official video], from the new Bon Iver album i,i [full album YouTube playlist].
posted by noneuclidean at 5:54 PM PST - 2 comments

YouTuber Stefan Milo interviews archeologist Wragg Sykes about evidence for Neanderthal art (58:26 minutes). She also discusses other symbolic behavior and interactions between Homo neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens. [more inside]
posted by nangar at 5:40 PM PST - 7 comments

GGPO, the gold standard for netplay code for fighting games — a notoriously difficult genre to implement online play for — is now open-source and freely available for commercial use.
posted by DoctorFedora at 4:24 PM PST - 12 comments

Owning a dog 'may increase length of life' [NHS Behind The Headlines] Two studies, a "review of previous studies" and "a new study from Sweden [...] were reported with enthusiasm by the UK media, with The Times enjoying a pun about patients being prescribed "woof-arin" instead of warfarin."
posted by readinghippo at 3:40 PM PST - 26 comments

Maybe you thought the most delicious caramel, peanut, and chocolate candy bar was named for a famous baseball player...nope. Or maybe a famous writer?....nope again. It turns out that candy bar names can be steeped in controversy, and the Oh Henry! bar is not alone. [more inside]
posted by OHenryPacey at 2:36 PM PST - 25 comments

With 46,881 sketchbooks in the collection, the Brooklyn Art Library is one of the largest collections of sketchbooks in the world [more inside]
posted by infinite intimation at 1:14 PM PST - 2 comments

Khashoggi’s Murder Should Have Made Saudi Arabia A Pariah. 7 Men Made Sure That Didn’t Happen. Meet the key figures behind the scenes, from a journalist-turned-lobbyist to an evangelical writer, in the effort to preserve the kingdom’s image after the killing.
posted by allkindsoftime at 1:00 PM PST - 6 comments

A YouTube video of medieval armour and arms enthusiasts, academics and re-creators firing a medieval longbow at medieval plate armour. Who wins, bowman or knight? Happy few or most excellent horse? Arrows versus Armour [more inside]
posted by alasdair at 12:55 PM PST - 22 comments

Amber Guyger was hugged by her victim’s brother and a judge, igniting a debate about forgiveness and race [The Washington Post] “The first hug was stunning enough — a young man embracing his brother’s killer for nearly a minute in the middle of the courtroom, just after telling the woman: “I forgive you.” “I love you as a person and I don’t wish anything bad on you,” 18-year-old Brandt Jean assured Amber Guyger, the former Dallas police officer convicted Tuesday for shooting Botham Jean as he ate ice cream in his own home. Guyger said she aimed to kill out of fear after entering the wrong apartment by mistake; jurors said it was murder. Then came another unlikely embrace — from the judge in the case that sparked renewed protests Wednesday as Guyger received a 10-year-sentence that some called a “slap in the face.” With the emotional trial wrapped up, Judge Tammy Kemp walked over in her black robe to give Guyger a Bible. Then, she wrapped her arms around Guyger and murmured to her. Together, they prayed. The two extraordinary moments would polarize, just like the case that led up to them, raising fresh questions about race in a white officer’s fatal shooting of a black man.” [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 12:34 PM PST - 34 comments

How to Tell Whether Expired Food Is Safe to Eat [more inside]
posted by mightshould at 11:11 AM PST - 25 comments

An exclusive 4-part documentary chronicling the creative process of the legendary Japanese filmmaker. He is shown as a passionate artisan, a steadfast trailblazer, and a father butting heads with his son. (via Open Culture) [more inside]
posted by sapagan at 10:38 AM PST - 4 comments

Extinction Rebellion [...] has now grown from a small-town band of determined neighbors super-gluing themselves to local city council buildings to a global movement of environmental demonstrators disrupting dozens of cities so policymakers will address climate change immediately. The group has kicked off protests again on Monday [Oct. 7, 2019] — including blocking traffic and landmarks and occupying government buildings, leading to hundreds of arrests in New York, London, Sydney and Amsterdam (BBC) — and it plans to continue mobilizing for the next two weeks. How A Small English Town Spurred The Group That's Reshaping Global Climate Protests (NPR)
posted by filthy light thief at 9:31 AM PST - 12 comments

“I told him that this was the first time I’d been to an exhibition where the majority of the attendees vocally opposed public funding for the arts. He, too, believed that the NEA was a waste of money: given a finite budget, weren’t there many other social welfare programs that deserved the funding more than art? He paused for a moment, before admitting this was a straw-man: “I mean, we don’t think the government should be paying for those either.” Culture Worriers (The Baffler)
posted by The Whelk at 9:19 AM PST - 24 comments

Winterfell is bigger than Game of Thrones would have you believe. A Song of Ice and Fire's Winterfell is actually fucking gargantuan, as seen in this realistic full 3D model by Shadiversity.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 8:52 AM PST - 32 comments

"For a long time, [Joss] Whedon himself was lauded as a feminist ally and icon. But after two decades, Angel's feminist legacy doesn't hold up to a rewatch. Though the spin-off featured several nuanced, compelling female characters, too many of them met the same predictable end, sacrificed for male characters' emotional arcs." Lindsay King-Miller says The deaths of Darla, Fred, and Cordelia Chase were a waste. Charisma Carpenter replied, "I have never felt more seen or understood than by this journalist’s expression of all I have never been able to articulate or say myself."
posted by Etrigan at 8:12 AM PST - 80 comments

"One day last October, Sandra Boynton struggled through six drafts of Dinosnores. She’d written down “honk shoo,” the obstreperous sound that dinosaurs make after “they all settle down in a dinosaur heap,” early in the morning, but only as a notion: “And the big dinosaur / has a snore like / honk shooo!” By the afternoon, three honk shoooooos appeared alone on a spread. A fourth arrived the following morning, and it made all the difference. The incantation was excessive—annoying to say and to hear, especially at the volume the type size suggested—which was exactly the point. She made a crucial alteration later, when drawing the page: “honk shoooooo!” became “honk SHOOOOOO.” “I look at these things,” she wrote in an email about the Dinosnores drafts, “and think, How do I have a career?” Ian Bogost writes for The Atlantic on Sandra Boynton's captivating universe.
posted by ChuraChura at 7:57 AM PST - 38 comments

The story of how 10 high-end guitars on their way to Hong Kong wound up in Anchorage classrooms [more inside]
posted by hilaryjade at 6:32 AM PST - 16 comments

Canada is the only industrialized country with universal medicare that does not provide coverage for medications, leaving us with the second-highest drug costs in the industrialised world, after Americans, despite pharmacare being recommended by major national commissions in Canada dating back to the 1960s and despite multiple promises by previous Liberal governments.
posted by clawsoon at 6:31 AM PST - 25 comments

According to PG&E (California's largest power company) "for public safety, it may be necessary for us to turn off electricity when gusty winds and dry conditions, combined with a heightened fire risk, are forecasted. This is called a 'Public Safety Power Shutoff' or 'PSPS'" and they have done that several times in California over the last couple of years. Today PG&E plans to turn off power for nearly 800,000 customers, and the power may stay off for as long as five days.
posted by Frayed Knot at 6:22 AM PST - 187 comments

Gizmodo takes a deep dive in Breaking Down the Old Friends and New Secrets of Star Trek: Picard's Latest Trailer
posted by katra at 10:14 PM PST - 59 comments

Animal scientists have long pondered the function of zebras' dsitinct stripes, and a growing consensus now suggests that they deter insects, possibly by confusing bugs' motion detection systems that control approach and landing. They applied stripes to cows.
posted by hippybear at 9:24 PM PST - 25 comments

Jacky 0 + Mumi have an excellent cover of NIN's Right Where It Belongs complemented by video [SLYT]
posted by I'm always feeling, Blue at 7:07 PM PST - 12 comments

They see facial recognition, smart diapers, and surveillance devices as inevitable evolutions. They’re not. Evolution is a terrible metaphor for technology. Technologists’ desire to make a parallel to evolution is flawed at its very foundation. Evolution is driven by random mutation — mistakes, not plans. (And while some inventions may indeed be the result of mishaps, the decision of a company to patent, produce, and market those inventions is not.) Evolution doesn’t have meetings about the market, the environment, the customer base. Evolution doesn’t patent things or do focus groups. Evolution doesn’t spend millions of dollars lobbying Congress to ensure that its plans go unfettered. [more inside]
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 6:56 PM PST - 33 comments

How pretty but pointless patterns in polar plots of primes prompt pretty important pondering on properties of those primes [SLYT]
posted by noneuclidean at 3:25 PM PST - 24 comments

A lot of things can kill you - but here are some surprising ones: Part One | Part Two (h/t Miss Cellania)
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 1:52 PM PST - 46 comments

Grandmaster Puzzles is a blog that posts a wide range of logic puzzles (many Sudoku variants, Minesweeper puzzles, Slitherlink, Fillomino, Nurikabe, Puzzle Hunts... and the list goes considerably on) designed by expert puzzle-makers. There's lots to see and do; you might like to start by browsing the Best Of... category, where some of the puzzles are dazzling to look at even if you have no intention of solving them.
posted by Wolfdog at 12:07 PM PST - 10 comments

Tools You Can Trust were an industrial duo from Hulme, Manchester formed during the early eighties. Heavily influenced by Suicide, Duane Eddy and Link Wray, with lyrics as political as you would expect from that time and place, they had no hits anywhere. [more inside]
posted by thatwhichfalls at 11:38 AM PST - 5 comments

The raging controversy over the NBA, China, and the Hong Kong protests, explained [Vox] “On Friday, Daryl Morey, the general manager of the Houston Rockets, tweeted something a bit outside his lane as a sports guy but fundamentally banal in the context of American public opinion: “fight for freedom, stand with Hong Kong.” [...] But Morey turns out to have stepped onto a much bigger landmine — Chinese politics, just as the National Basketball Association grows more thirsty to get into the Chinese market. Morey got himself denounced by the Chinese consulate in Houston and by the owner of his team. His tweet was deleted, the Chinese Basketball Association announced that it is suspending all cooperation with the Rockets, Morey was made to apologize, and the NBA put out a statement [2nd follow-up statement] characterizing his tweet as “regrettable” and clarifying that his support for Hong Kong protesters “does not represent the Rockets or the NBA.” The Rockets are reportedly considering firing Morey in an effort to appease the Chinese. Meanwhile, the NBA’s eagerness to squash a backlash in China is prompting its own backlash in American politics.” [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 10:49 AM PST - 61 comments

Blizzard Suspends Hearthstone Player For Hong Kong Support, Pulls Prize Money. "I think it's my duty to say something about the issue," Hong Kong gamer says. [more inside]
posted by Carillon at 10:22 AM PST - 98 comments

After talking on the phone with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday, Trump announced that US troops will stand aside for a Turkish offensive in northern Syria (NPR), much like last year (WaPo). This resulted in condemnation from Senate Republicans, among others (The Guardian) as the Kurds prepare to face Turkish troops (Al Jazeera) and "ethnic cleansing." (WaPo) [more inside]
posted by ZeusHumms at 9:17 AM PST - 436 comments

Finally, I crossed my Rubicon. The sentence itself was a pedestrian affair. Typing an e-mail to my son, I began “I am p—” and was about to write “pleased” when predictive text suggested “proud of you.” I am proud of you. Wow, I don’t say that enough. And clearly Smart Compose thinks that’s what most fathers in my state say to their sons in e-mails. I hit Tab. No biggie. And yet, sitting there at the keyboard, I could feel the uncanny valley prickling my neck. It wasn’t that Smart Compose had guessed correctly where my thoughts were headed—in fact, it hadn’t. The creepy thing was that the machine was more thoughtful than I was. From The Next Word, a longform look at machine-enabled writing and predictive text by John Seabrook in The New Yorker
posted by chavenet at 9:10 AM PST - 28 comments

Danny Kessler, head of Okeh Records Artists & Repertoire (A&R), told [Johnnie] Ray's biographer Jonny Whiteside, "I played the record for the sales force at Columbia and almost in unison they said, 'We don't think she's gonna make it.' They all thought I was pitching a girl who sounded like Dinah Washington! Finally I convinced them that she was a boy, and then I had to break the news that she was a white boy. I know they all felt that I had lost my head completely." PopMatters shares an excerpt from Rocking the Closet: How Little Richard, Johnnie Ray, Liberace, and Johnny Mathis Queered Pop Music. [more inside]
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:52 AM PST - 5 comments

Dublin-based writer Orla ní Dhúill examines the appropriation of the Irish language and folklore in fantasy literature, from lines of dialogue cribbed from books of Irish proverbs to problematic tropes coloured through an English colonial perception of wild/savage Ireland, to the oddly disconcerting sensation for Irish speakers of seeing mundane words from their language badly translated and imbued with arcane significance by fantasy writers from abroad. (Apparently Tolkien was not to blame—his Elvish draws more on Finnish—though lazier or less linguistically adept successors tended to look to the Emerald Isle whenever they needed to crib something a bit fey, mystical and distinct from the mundane modern world.) Ní Dhúill also appears on an episode of the Motherfocloir podcast to discuss this phenomenon in more detail; mentioning, among other things, Warhammer space-elves, the cringeworthy elf-IRA in Shadowrun and the grimoire in Buffy the Vampire Slayer whose text was an announcement of a new bus lane in Dublin.
posted by acb at 8:33 AM PST - 39 comments

What do you know about dinosaur eggs? What do you want to know? PopSci: egg fossils can reveal a lot about how dinosaurs lived, including the understanding that dinosaur eggs took between 3 and 6 months to hatch (Science Mag), which put them at a disadvantage against other reptiles, birds and mammals. Want to know more? The Embryo Project Encyclopedia has a page on Dinosaur Egg Parataxonomy, and the UC Museum of Paleontology has a section on fossil eggshells. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 8:05 AM PST - 4 comments

"Fred Schneider’s sing-shout poetry, Cindy Wilson and Kate Pierson’s alien girl-group harmonies, Ricky Wilson’s tricky guitar riffs and Keith Strickland’s art-funky drums. Even demographically they were nothing like the new world of new wave being built by Talking Heads and Devo: 40 percent female, 60 percent Southern, 80 percent queer, 100 percent fun." Before & After ‘The B-52’s’, a track by track guide.
posted by everybody had matching towels at 6:34 AM PST - 37 comments

Let us now chronicle the rise and sort-of fall of British YouTuber and now-former national e-cycling champion Cameron Jeffers. Unfortunately, the nouns in this story do not become that much easier to understand as we proceed, but please bear with me.
posted by Etrigan at 6:15 AM PST - 32 comments

The National Hurricane Center is part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. If you don't want to remember "nhc.noaa.gov", you can also navigate directly to the handy "hurricanes.gov". The NHC tracks all tropical cyclone activity in the North Atlantic, Eastern and Central North Pacific. Live in a different part of the world? Here's a map and links to other national tropical cyclone centers, such as the India Meteorological Department or the Japan Meteorological Agency. [more inside]
posted by Huffy Puffy at 5:26 AM PST - 9 comments

One of the most interesting subreddits is r/blackmagicfuckery. Here are the best clips of all time. Here is the regular flow of posts.
posted by growabrain at 4:32 AM PST - 25 comments

On the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China. "I am writing to you from a foreign land in a foreign tongue, with a body that used to be inside yours." A birthday letter and poetic consideration of how the personal gets entangled with the nation-state, written by physicist Yangyang Cheng. [more inside]
posted by spamandkimchi at 1:22 AM PST - 10 comments

Lauren Gunderson has more plays staged every year than anyone besides Shakespeare. By Dan Kois for Slate "I can’t disagree with what Gunderson said when I asked her if she wouldn’t rather be known for plays with a little more of an edge: “I would rather have a show that a lot of people will do,” she replied. Every theater needs a holiday show, she pointed out, and “I’d rather that holiday offering be a big feminist play that critiques the institution of marriage and puts five women onstage. You know how rare that is?”
posted by bq at 2:31 PM PST - 37 comments

On the day Jeffery Epstein died, Alan Dershowitz threatened to sue me. I wrote about it.

So recounts Columbia Journalism Review reporter Lyz Lenz as a sort of lede for her new piece on not just Dershowitz's attempts to regain control of the media narrative around both himself and Jeffery Epstein, but also the techniques of media fixers like Michael Sitrick to do so. [more inside]
posted by NoxAeternum at 2:14 PM PST - 17 comments

Allegro for slide whistle and piano, transcribed from the Sonata in C Major for Viola da Gamba and Continuo by Carl Friedrich Abel. Make your own slide whistle!
posted by Orange Dinosaur Slide at 1:12 PM PST - 12 comments

Why America Needs Whistle-Blowers In the American tradition, whistle-blowers expose illegal or unconstitutional acts that the powerful want to keep secret. [more inside]
posted by allkindsoftime at 12:52 PM PST - 1 comment

Glass explodes. Metal screams against metal. A car crash is a waking nightmare, but one that has become increasingly survivable—and we have piles of dead bodies to thank. At the Wayne State University campus in midtown Detroit, there stands an empty building once used by the school’s Biomechanical Engineering department. It was here that one of the grandfathers of modern automotive safety, Dr. Lawrence Patrick, first tossed a human corpse down an unused elevator shaft. You know, for science. While using human remains as test subjects may seem ghoulish, these researchers and donated bodies were, and still are, on the front lines of saving lives.

(Warning: This post includes images of dead bodies, used as cadavers and wrapped for anonymity and dignity.)

This is gonna be a creepy one. Buckle up.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 12:47 PM PST - 22 comments

Queer, Southern, and In Love: ‘Fried Green Tomatoes’ and Quintessential Lesbian Literature [Spectrum South] “For most people, the film remains a story about best friends and resilience. For those of us who have read the book and understand the real story behind it, however, it means so much more. We see our experiences and history being realized, despite the outside world’s attempts to erase or sterilize us. We feel validated in the love we feel for our best friends, friends who also become lovers and who are with us through child rearing and sickness. Like Idgie and Ruth, we know what it means to be queer, southern, and in love.” [YouTube][Trailer] [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 9:49 AM PST - 22 comments

Why the Death of Greatest Hits Albums and Reissues Is Worth Mourning (Stephen Thomas Erlewine for Pitchfork, 2016)
posted by box at 9:47 AM PST - 91 comments

After a couple of scandals (previously and previously) and a bunch of policy announcements (previously), Canada's federal party leaders are meeting at 7pm EDT tonight for the only official English-language debate. Watch in English, French, LSQ, ASL, Ojibwe, Plains Cree, Inuktitut, Cantonese, Mandarin, Italian, Punjabi, or Arabic, or at one of the many viewing parties at movie theatres, libraries and bookstores across the country. [more inside]
posted by clawsoon at 9:13 AM PST - 217 comments

U.S. adds 136,000 jobs in September, unemployment rate hits 50-year low - But is that telling the whole story? “ ...despite top-line job growth, the overall picture is clear: real wages are stagnant as corporate profits reach record levels, and price increases are eroding small wage gains for the 29% of American adults in the lower class and the 52% in the middle class. More pointedly, the Democratic presidential race has popularized a key finding of the Federal Reserve’s 2018 survey of U.S. households: almost 40% of Americans would struggle with an unexpected $400 financial emergency. Could any advanced economy claim to be “strong” with such an existential level of financial insecurity? How superficial is the recent U.S. quarterly job growth as the foundation for an ecologically sustainable, widely beneficial modern economy, countering dangerous trends of rising income inequality?” Ditch The Unemployment Rate (Sludge)
posted by The Whelk at 8:51 AM PST - 30 comments

"It’s not a pretty picture, but in a sense, it’s Federalist 51 in action." The Washington Post offers an annotated calendar that will be updated: What’s next in the Trump impeachment inquiry, and will Trump cooperate with it? as well as ongoing reporting and analysis. [more inside]
posted by katra at 7:14 AM PST - 1735 comments

Text Rendering Hates You. Rendering text, how hard could it be? As it turns out, incredibly hard! To my knowledge, literally no system renders text "perfectly". It's all best-effort, although some efforts are more important than others... The overarching theme here will be: there are no consistent right answers, everything is way more important than you think, and everything affects everything else.
posted by Wolfdog at 6:08 AM PST - 35 comments

Until Congress restores the funding it slashed from the agency over the past nine years, the IRS will continue to audit the working poor at about the same rate as the wealthiest 1% because it is the most efficient use of available IRS examination resources. (ProPublica updating their earlier reporting) [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 9:16 PM PST - 50 comments

Facebook says political candidates can lie. Earlier this month "wax statue cursed into life" Mark Zuckerberg had a visit with Donald Trump and Josh Hawley (R -MIssouri). While Facebook claims to remove ads and content that have been debunked by fact checkers, they recently declared any website or page “with the primary purpose of expressing the opinion or agenda of a political figure” exempt from fact checking, in time for Donald Trump to air a series of completely false attack ads against Biden.
posted by benzenedream at 6:54 PM PST - 100 comments

Masks On. Washington Wizards All Star Guard Bradley Beal writes a Players Tribune piece about the WNBA Finals. [more inside]
posted by cashman at 5:49 PM PST - 8 comments

Natalie finally convinced me to make an Instagram 😝 Name’s Liv 💖 Liv may have been tempting fate when she chose the Instagram handle livinthefuture. (Main link is to the first entry in an illustration-based Instagram storytelling project. Second link is to the overall Instagram profile, which will be a spoiler because of Instagram's reverse chronology.)
posted by Caduceus at 2:49 PM PST - 25 comments

Available for a limited time, BBC Radio 4 has a full-cast abridged reading of Margaret Atwood’s new novel, The Testaments. This sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale picks up 15 years after the events in the previous book (very mildly revealing review of The Testaments by Anne Enright). All 14-minute episodes have now been released: The first episode is available until Oct. 15, 2019; the fifteenth and final episode is available until Oct. 30. (The Testaments previously on MetaFilter; The Handmaid’s Tale previously on MetaFilter.) [more inside]
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 1:08 PM PST - 19 comments

As the perforated rolls of the player piano prefigured the punch cards of early computing, so, too, have they shaped how we talk about creative machines. Like the ghostly hands that played upon pianola keys, AI art stokes deep cultural anxieties about the risks automation poses to human activity. Ultimately, we fear that they will replace us, whether at the factory or at the canvas. From Ghost Hands, Player Pianos, and the Hidden History of AI by Vanessa Chang [LARB] [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 12:35 PM PST - 5 comments

25 years ago, Pearl Jam never meant to be the biggest band in the world. Somehow their first two albums sold something close to 20 million units between them, and the band was a global force, and was feeling unmoored. For their third album, Vitalogy, the band went deliberately experimental and obtuse, exploring punk and sound collage and, just to prove they could, included three of the best songs they've ever written. Named after an archaic medical volume [Google Books link] Eddie Vedder found at a yard sale, the full album [56m] tries to dissect relationships between people and other people, fame, substances, music, and offers up a message about struggling to find meaning in the midst of personal chaos. The accompanying booklet of lyrics and liner notes (an entire art project unto itself) was paid for by the band rather than passing costs along to their fans. Pearl Jam refused to make any videos for this album. Division One: Last Exit, Spin The Black Circle, Not For You, Tremor Christ, Nothingman, Whipping [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 12:23 PM PST - 27 comments

How this chair became a pop culture icon. Vox YT 7:34
posted by Bee'sWing at 11:34 AM PST - 17 comments

Today's Document from the (US) National Archives at Tumblr. Daily featured documents from today in history from the holdings of the U.S. National Archives. If you haven't seen it, it's delightful. Does what it says on the tin. [Previously on the blue: Public Library Tumblrs] [more inside]
posted by crush at 7:55 AM PST - 2 comments

A giant has gone away
posted by Freedomboy at 7:33 AM PST - 57 comments

"Oregon-based landscape photographer Andrew Studer has found a way to send us to space without the need of a rocket. In his latest photo series, Space to Roam, Studer shows off the otherworldly beauty of the American Southwest with the help of an 'astronaut' explorer." via
posted by notsnot at 6:50 AM PST - 6 comments

Last Moments is a powerful photo series by Pulitzer Prize-nominated photographer Ross Taylor, who was invited to document the intimate last moments in a beloved pet’s life when the owner must deal with a painful farewell. [more inside]
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 11:26 PM PST - 32 comments

Wilmot's Warehouse [YouTube][Launch Trailer] “In the game, you control Wilmot, a square person who is in charge of a warehouse full of similarly sized squares with pictures on them that abstractly represent what they contain. One might have a bird head on it, while another might have an alternating series of red-and-white diagonal lines. As Wilmot, it’s up to you to run the warehouse by organizing it however you see fit and retrieving items from it when requested. This naturally splits the game into two separate stages, which manage to test your puzzle-solving abilities in different ways. The organization stage tests how good you are at sorting everything in the warehouse while also planning ahead. During the retrieval stage, you’ll need to remember where you put things, and you’ll also learn if you made your warehouse navigable.” [via: The Verge] [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 9:28 PM PST - 21 comments

Foot rails in bars are noticeable mostly when they’re absent. You belly up to a bar, start pawing one foot in the air like a dog begging for a treat and find no firm platform upon which to land. You wonder: What kind of place is this?

From Imbibe magazine: Mixopedia: The Origin of the Bar Foot Rail
posted by Lexica at 8:07 PM PST - 19 comments

Glenlivet has some time on their hands, and is clearly down with the youths (tm) Glenlivet has devised whiskey cocktail capsules for popping in your mouth. Like a tidepod that wont poison you. Except if you have too many of them.
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 7:32 PM PST - 87 comments

Gnossiennes No. 1 Forever is a generative, unending version of Erik Satie's minimalist piano composition, Gnossiennes No. 1. It uses digital sheet music, markov chains, and browser-based midi to extend the composition indefinitely. Watch creator Mouse Reeve explain how (and why) they made it in their recent talk, Minimalist Piano Forever, at the Strange Loop conference.
posted by Lirp at 5:57 PM PST - 19 comments

Empowerment through layoffs. We’re here to empower journalism. We’re so passionate about empowering journalism,” said Heckman, hours after laying off dozens of journalists. “We’ve been doing this for decades, and our goal is that when you work you gain equity, and you build wealth for your children and your children’s children. That’s our goal.” [more inside]
posted by jojo and the benjamins at 3:54 PM PST - 24 comments

The College of New Rochelle has a 15.6-acre campus with tree-lined paths and a 19th-century castle and it’s just 20 miles from New York City. But is it worth $50 million?
posted by Etrigan at 3:41 PM PST - 21 comments

Horse racing doesn’t have a national regulatory body, and so keeping track of its fatalities presumably falls on the 38 separate state commissions that oversee it. Beginning in 2015, Battuello began sending Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to each commission, asking for the names of the dead. He publishes his findings on a website he founded called Horseracing Wrongs, and they include more than 5,000 racetrack deaths (he calls them “kills”) over the last five years, with names, dates, and locations. The man who would end horse racing (Deadspin) [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 1:44 PM PST - 34 comments

Announced at New York Comic Con yesterday was the news that Steven Universe, instead of a season six, would be getting an epilogue series, Steven Universe Future, along with a trailer. Previously... - Fanfare [more inside]
posted by JHarris at 1:39 PM PST - 22 comments

600 Years of Grape Harvests Document 20th Century Climate Change: By mining archival records of grape harvest dates going back to 1354, scientists have reconstructed a 664-year record of temperature traced by fruit ripening. [...]“Hot and dry years in the past were outliers, while they have become the norm since the transition to rapid warming in 1988,” Labbé and his team wrote in their paper, which was published in August in Climate of the Past [direct open-access link to the journal article].
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 1:02 PM PST - 10 comments

Diahann Carroll, the groundbreaking and award-winning African American actor, has died at 84. From 1968 to 1971, Carroll starred in the TV series Julia as single mother and nurse Julia Baker, whose husband had been killed in the Vietnam War. This was the first major non-servant role for a black woman on American TV and had a profound influence as other black single mothers and their children saw their family structure represented in a positive way. (Carroll’s performance won a Golden Globe in 1969.) She also made history as the first African American woman to win a Tony Award: in 1962, she won for her lead role in No Strings, a musical written specifically for her by composer Richard Rogers. Carroll was also nominated for an Academy Award in 1975 for the lead role in the movie Claudine. Some tributes and reactions to Carroll’s death from colleagues and those who looked up to her.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 12:28 PM PST - 39 comments

Focusing on the global implications of decolonisation, Achille Mbembe calls for the reformation of reason as a shared human faculty towards repairing and caring for life. by the Norwegian team from the newspaper Klassekampen
posted by Mrs Potato at 3:32 AM PST - 13 comments

Elisabeth van der Meer, "Russian Ghost Stories" (A Russian Affair, 15 Oct. 2018): "Now that the evenings are getting longer again, it’s the perfect time to read ghost stories. And there were plenty of ghosts, witches and other scary things around in 19th century Russian literature!" The list includes Nikolai Gogol's "The Viy" (1835)--basis for the classic horror film Viy (1967; 72 mins.; IMDb; detailed review; enthusiasm for it on MeFi)--and Anton Chekhov's "The Black Monk" (1893; LitMed [spoilers]), an eerie tale connected to Braga's "Légende valaque" (lyrics). If a low-key drama set rather than written in the 19th C. sounds more appealing, there are many ghosts in the Russian paranormal mystery TV series Detective Anna (2016-2017; 56 eps.; IMDb). [more inside]
posted by Wobbuffet at 11:34 PM PST - 7 comments

Livestreaming the process of cutting into and dissecting a dead body may sound grisly or voyeuristic — almost like a snuff film or the unsettling wave of pimple-popping videos that flooded the internet a few years ago. But Margolis, who’s also an accomplished orchestral musician and improv performer, sees his services as an empowering tool for families of the recently deceased. Not only to provide useful information in the face of a tragic event, but also to help them come to terms with their loss.

"Families come to us for closure, for grief, to find out what happened."

[Article does not contain video or images; some description may be disturbing] [more inside]
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 11:02 PM PST - 16 comments

Over his long career, Gordon Hempton [OutsideOnline article] has mastered the art of truly listening. He’s known as the Sound Tracker. Some people call him an acoustic ecologist... Now, Gordon Hempton is losing his hearing. But with that loss has come an intense urgency to share his life’s work... And, he’ll give us a crash course in the art of truly listening — something that he says is a dying art, constantly under threat in our noisy, modern lives.. Birdnote presents a 7 episode podcast environmental sound series. The full episode list, 30 minutes each. Episode 1 is a lesson in listening. The soundscapes are in the following six half-hours. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 9:45 PM PST - 8 comments

3.5 minutes of beautiful storms rolling across the plains. If you liked that, here's Transient 1, previously on MeFi.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 9:29 PM PST - 8 comments

The Cheating Scandal Rocking the Poker World [more inside]
posted by allkindsoftime at 5:15 PM PST - 49 comments

Shenmue 3's Demo Is 1999 In A Bottle [Kotaku] “Whether it’s talking to a shopkeeper or chopping wood to earn a little extra money, Shenmue 3 has a unique simplicity. Maybe you wander and play a quick game of Lucky Hit, a simple but addictive game where you drop a ball down a pachinko-esque peg board. Maybe you spend too much money buying capsule toys from gacha machines outside the local shop. These are familiar activities, longtime staples of the series, and like everything else they retain a deliberate pace. In 2019, that can feel strange, but it does evoke the feeling of the earlier games. Shenmue 3 could have easily felt overproduced or too modern. For good or ill, things don’t seem much different than they were 20 years ago. [...] Players looking for a slower pace and old-school sensibilities will be pleased. Newer players eager to see what the big deal is could walk away disappointed that the series isn’t quite in step with modern design. Like the original games before it, I get the sense Shenmue 3 will be a love-it-or-hate-it affair.” [2015 E3 Announcement] [2019 E3 Demo Trailer] [Gamescom Trailer] [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 3:59 PM PST - 18 comments

James Robinson, 79, Dies; Filled an Ambulance Gap in Brooklyn: Frustrated that responses to emergency calls took too long in Bedford-Stuyvesant, he started a volunteer ambulance corps, and it’s been nimble. At first he and a friend with whom he started the corps listened to police and fire department radios and went to addresses they heard on the air — accident scenes or apartments where sick people needed help. They answered the calls in their own cars. Before long they got an ambulance [in 1990], the first of several that the corps would operate. Mr. Robinson recalled in 2017 that on the first day with the first ambulance, the corps treated 10 people at the scene of a fire. On the second day, corps members delivered a baby. [more inside]
posted by not_the_water at 3:09 PM PST - 31 comments

Musician, songwriter and photographer Kim Shattuck (the Muffs [previously], Pandoras, et al) has passed away at age 56 from ALS. The Muffs' final album is scheduled to be released October 18th.
posted by queensissy at 2:15 PM PST - 23 comments

In Mark Bittman's latest project, Heated, a culinary conflict is stewing. It started with a piece by Emily Nunn claiming that tuna noodle casserole has no place in the American comfort food canon. In defense of this esteemed hot dish, Samantha Irby responds with an appetizing retort disguised as a recipe.
posted by slogger at 1:18 PM PST - 84 comments

Monty Python's Flying Circus' 50th Anniversary On Sunday, October 5, 1969 a group of six young chaps, most of whom had begun performing separately and together several years earlier at Cambridge and/or Oxford and had already become familiar faces on a handful of BBC comedy programmes. made their debut broadcast of a show that could have been called "Bunn, Wackett, Buzzard, Stubble and Boot". [more inside]
posted by briank at 12:34 PM PST - 88 comments

The Star Wars x Le Creuset Collection will soon be available, of which the Tatooine round Dutch oven has an extremely limited release. But there's also a Han Solo in carbonite roaster, a pie bird, some silicone trivets, droid mini cocottes, and {breathes heavily} ... "I hear blue milk pairs beautifully with porg." Items range from $20 to $900. Post title from the advert on YouTube.
posted by Wordshore at 12:04 PM PST - 90 comments

When he heard that no babies born in Britain in 2016 were named Nigel, Nigel Smith began to fret that the people with whom he shared a first name were a "dying breed." ... Instead of going into mourning, however, he decided to have some fun with it. He owns the Fleece Inn, near Worcestershire, so he organized "Nigel Night" at the pub.
posted by Etrigan at 12:03 PM PST - 31 comments

Greater horseshoe bats living in Kent after absence of 115 years [The Guardian]
posted by readinghippo at 11:47 AM PST - 2 comments

In the past few years, we've seen the use of open source software turned to unethical ends, such as we saw recently with Chef and their contracting with ICE. In response, developer Coraline Ada Ehmke has created the Hippocratic License - a license that requires users to "first, do no harm". [more inside]
posted by NoxAeternum at 10:16 AM PST - 61 comments

“Long hours are not coincidental, not choices made by people who simply love their jobs. Nor are they inevitable. They are the result of the drive toward more profit, wrung out of workers who produce ever more, yet receive less pay for their efforts. The lessons of the shorter-hours movements of centuries and decades past are still deeply relevant, and are being revived for a new time.” The Four-Day Work Week—Not Just a Daydream (The Progressive) Labour commits to 32-hour working week within a decade (The Independent) A Shorter Work Week Without Drop In Pay : A Radical and Pragmatic Proposal. (Previously: Who Stole The Four Day Week?)
posted by The Whelk at 9:56 AM PST - 48 comments

Scrimshanders are a rare breed and their work has entered the American consciousness chiefly as the domain of 19th century whalers. But this Friday, Fourteenfifteen Gallery will not be a showing the scrimshaw work of some second mate named Delmar from The Rose of Nantucket, but rather the scrimshaw of Adri De La Cruz of Albuquerque. Her take is pure New Mexico. Bones of Grief, the Scrimshaw of Adri De La Cruz (Albuquerque Alibi artist interview) "Good Grief" is currently showing at Fourteenfifteen Gallery, which has a few more photos of her work. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 9:14 AM PST - 5 comments

Between October 1, 2001, and December 25, 2016, cartoonist Chris Onstad gifted the world with Achewood. Loved by some, hated by others, it was unbelievably inventive with language but out of touch with its inclusivity. In two recent entries for the MNT, Keith Pille (a.k.a. Mefi's own COBRA!) raises the questions of Achewood's vision of modern manhood, as well as whether it has a misogyny problem.
posted by Navelgazer at 8:15 AM PST - 76 comments

The impact of the movement goes far beyond powerful men losing their jobs. [more inside]
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 8:01 AM PST - 8 comments

1979 -- a mix of the year's music presented by The Hood. They plan to release one more for each of the following years over the next three Thursdays. [more inside]
posted by dobbs at 4:13 AM PST - 34 comments

Organic Compounds in Plumes of Saturn's Moon Enceladus NASA's Cassini spacecraft collected invaluable data and images of Saturn and its moons over the approximately 20 years that the mission took place. While the mission ended on Sept. 15, 2017, scientists continue to study the wealth of data that they gathered during the mission. [more inside]
posted by The Blue Olly at 4:05 AM PST - 7 comments

Ursula K. Le Guin's Revolutions - "Le Guin's work is distinctive not only because it is imaginative, or because it is political, but because she thought so deeply about the work of building a future worth living." [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 2:46 AM PST - 10 comments

Las Vegas' death investigators witnessed the atrocities of the Route 91 shooting, then had to grapple with the difficult task of healing themselves. (Ann Givens, GQ) [more inside]
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 10:45 PM PST - 7 comments

This evening a vigil was held at Princeton University for Wang Xiyue. Wang is a husband, a father, a historian, and, for three years now, a captive in Evin Prison in Iran. In 2016, Wang traveled to Iran to conduct archival research on the administrative and cultural history of the Qajar dynasty. He was arrested that summer and the following year, was charged with and convicted of espionage. Wang's wife, Hua Qu, continues to work unceasingly on her husband's behalf as she raises their son alone in the United States. Wang is one of several citizens of the United States of America currently imprisoned in Iran.
posted by mustard seeds at 9:39 PM PST - 3 comments

One of the best computer games of the year recieves one of the most in-depth reviews: Video Game Dunkey, a normally foul-mouthed New Yorker youtuber gamer into edgy reviews, reviews the Untitled Goose Game, and gives it the dialog and backstory we all deserve. Wildly safe for work.
posted by Slap*Happy at 7:54 PM PST - 57 comments

How Ireland’s Kerrygold Butter Conquered America's Kitchens. Bloomberg’s Elizabeth G. Dunn explains why Americans melt for that “canary yellow” goodness, and why, despite potential tariffs, there’s no reason to have a cow: “‘Ireland running out of cream?’ Kelly repeats my question, with amusement. ‘Ah, that’d be the day.’”
posted by sallybrown at 6:03 PM PST - 79 comments

A federal judge has ruled that Safehouse, a proposed safe injection facility in Philadelphia, does not violate section 856 of the US Controlled Substance Act. Although the site still faces legal hurdles, the ruling sets a precedent that could pave the way for sites in San Francisco, Seattle, and several other US cities. [more inside]
posted by I am a Sock, I am an Island at 4:57 PM PST - 14 comments

Blogger T.K. provides a six-part look at the history of South Korean-Japanese relations and the rise and fall of the system shaped by the 1965 Treaty on Basic Relations. (Although not limited to any specific current events, this series may be of particular interest to those trying to understand how a major trade war arose from a South Korean Supreme Court decision upholding the right of victims of forced labor under Japanese rule to sue the companies that victimized them.) [more inside]
posted by shenderson at 2:22 PM PST - 8 comments

Armando Iannucci rips up rules with Dickens adaption: The Personal History of David Copperfield [The Guardian] ““It was like Manhattan in the 1920s,” said Iannucci. “London then and London now was and is a global city. We wanted to make a city that the audience would recognise and the characters would recognise.” The director said there is a big debate at the moment about “what Britain is and what it is not”, and how it has become excluded on the world stage, and the film’s outlook offers another perspective. “I wanted to celebrate what I think Britain is, which is something more lively and vibrant and cheery,” he said. “Personally, I’m an optimist.”” [YouTube][Official Trailer] [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 2:13 PM PST - 22 comments

Gerald Holmes passed away at age 79. Illustrator of the 74 Hank the Cowdog children's books.
posted by Bee'sWing at 2:12 PM PST - 5 comments

Gavin Newsom signed into law today AB857, which allows for public banks to form in California. The only other state in the US with a public bank is North Dakota. Vox covers how California could take inspiration from North Dakota in setting up its own. AOC has congratulated CA on its passage, which isn't surprising since both she and Bernie Sanders have proposed their own take on a public bank by using the US Post Office. Elizabeth Warren has also endorsed the idea.
posted by toastyk at 1:04 PM PST - 15 comments

1OOM is a re-creation of the classic Master of Orion, which arguably defined the entire genre known as 4X games. It includes several new features, enhanced UI and AI opponents, and general quality of life fixes. The original MOO1 data files are required to play.
posted by Alensin at 12:07 PM PST - 23 comments

Xu would be the first to tell you that he’s more of a troll at heart than political rebel, and he’s become a target of the state for reasons that are much more fitting of his personality: He likes to talk shit, and he likes to fight.

Lauren Teixeira brings us the story of Xu Xiaodong, a Chinese dissident whose praxis is whaling on martial artists propped up by China's propaganda machine.
posted by Etrigan at 11:59 AM PST - 18 comments

Feast of Legends: You are adventurers in the realm of Beef ’s Keep, where the nations have been splintered over major disagreements in how to treat the realm’s people. Creepingvale and the United Clown Nations have led their people into a collective darkness known as The Deep Freeze. While the world currently feels like a cold and desolate place, you reside in the one nation that remains a true beacon of hope: Freshtovia. (And yes, you do get buffs from eating Wendy's at the gaming table.)
posted by robocop is bleeding at 11:30 AM PST - 58 comments

"We find that Christians value thoughts and prayers from religious strangers and priests, while atheists and agnostics are 'prayer averse'—willing to pay to avoid receiving prayers." The authors conclude that thoughts and prayers for others should be employed selectively.
posted by andorphin at 10:41 AM PST - 66 comments

The suit was once the uniform of the powerful and a requirement for every man. Now, people mostly wear suits when they’re in trouble.
posted by COD at 10:37 AM PST - 131 comments

“There are so many myths and lies around the idea of meritocracy in this country. Even Trump’s whole, like, “I got a small loan.” I think we have this pervasive belief: If you work hard and you do the grind and you do the hustle, the American Dream is within reach for anyone. And what I’m trying to show from my stories is that so much of it is also due to systemic racism and who had access to what. Many of our members who are white have multigenerational wealth, because their parents or grandparents went to college on the GI Bill, or their ancestors had access to land ownership before any person of color was ever allowed access to land ownership.“ Meet the Rich Kids Who Want to Give Away All Their Money (Town & Country)
posted by The Whelk at 9:44 AM PST - 26 comments

It's October again, and artists all over the world take on the Inktober drawing challenge by doing one ink drawing a day the entire month. You can get inspiration from Instagram (might be daunting), Twitter and Tumblr (aren't always so polished), but it's not an exercise for people with fancy pens and tons of skill. Anyone can join Inktober, just pick up a pen and start drawing. [reminder via Mltshp]
posted by filthy light thief at 8:34 AM PST - 33 comments

"How Is School?" An animated short film by Nancy Marcel
posted by overeducated_alligator at 7:28 AM PST - 7 comments

The Untranslated blog is closing after six years of reviewing significant literary works that have not yet been translated into English and are relatively unknown in the Anglophone world [more inside]
posted by ocular shenanigans at 2:56 AM PST - 6 comments

What's Your Grief was founded by two Baltimore-based mental health professionals with 20+ years of experience in grief and bereavement. Their separate experiences dealing with the death of a parent led them to wonder why anyone should have to feel alone when so many have been through grief themselves. The section of their site called 64 Things contains lists of grief-related subjects, including a collection of 64 Six Word Stories About Grief. [more inside]
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 10:34 PM PST - 18 comments

[Thoreau's] mother brought him sandwiches and Walden Pond was on her property. Twitter rages against Thoreau. [more inside]
posted by mecran01 at 7:48 PM PST - 106 comments

Malfunctioning Sex Robot Patricia Lockwood tries to read every novel by John Updike.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 4:47 PM PST - 63 comments

Thieves on the lam with bull penis dog treats, says St. John's pet store owner: "He spoke to As It Happens host Carol Off about the brazen theft. Here's part of their conversation."
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 4:14 PM PST - 30 comments

Nearly 30 years ago, Mortal Kombat’s blood forever changed the video game industry [Polygon] “Mortal Kombat’s fatalities were so graphic that they had to literally be seen to be believed. One kid would hold court on a playground and strive to convince a jury of peers that he’d seen one character rip off his face and breathe fire, reducing the other guy to ashes and bones. Another kid swore up and down that a fighter in a white jumpsuit and straw hat could zap characters’ heads off with a bolt of lightning. “That breeds interest and foot traffic,” later GamePro editor Dan Amrich said of the rumors surrounding MK’s gory finishing moves, “and before you know it, you have people looking closer because that controversial thrill was so unexpected. And that’s going to be very powerful with kids whose media is largely — and rightfully! — gatekept by their parents. Here’s a game you’re know you’re ‘not supposed to play,’ even if you haven’t been strictly forbidden to play it. It tapped into the lure of the forbidden.”” [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 1:51 PM PST - 45 comments

The Public Domain Review recently showcased the work of Massachusetts illustrator Augustus Jansson. At the beginning of the 20th century, he created a series of vivid color advertisments for the Queen City Printing Ink Company in Cincinnati, the results of which look like a cross between classic playing card designs and the Beatles' Pepperland.
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 12:59 PM PST - 4 comments

"The conversation inevitably turned to the uniqueness of the island. While sitting across from Ms. Koster, Ms. Matas pondered the concept of feminism, often met with bewilderment here. The reasoning: Of course, women are capable. Of course, women are competent. But no, men and women aren’t equal — women have proven they can do everything men can, but men can’t do everything women can." [more inside]
posted by Grandysaur at 12:41 PM PST - 21 comments

For the past two decades, Cormac McCarthy — whose ten novels include The Road, No Country for Old Men and Blood Meridian — has provided extensive editing to numerous faculty members and postdocs at the Santa Fe Institute (SFI) in New Mexico. He has helped to edit works by scientists such as Harvard University’s first tenured female theoretical physicist, Lisa Randall, and physicist Geoffrey West, who authored the popular-science book Scale.
posted by Etrigan at 11:39 AM PST - 37 comments

Want to Time Travel Back to the 80s? Visit a Prison "Typing Room" [The Marshall Project ] "Most federal prisons have a designated area for inmates to pursue legal work: a legal library/typing room." [more inside]
posted by readinghippo at 10:04 AM PST - 11 comments

On the surface, the stakes in this case seem enormous. In reality, they’re even larger. The Supreme Court will hear three cases next Tuesday that ask whether it is legal to fire workers because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. That alone is enough to make them three of the most important employment discrimination cases in many years. But there are additional layers to these cases, layers that could imperil all workers regardless of whether or not they are LGBTQ. The defendants’ arguments would reopen long-settled legal arguments, potentially upending much of federal anti-discrimination law in the process.
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 9:55 AM PST - 21 comments

“The question is straightforward: does it matter what the official unemployment numbers are if the people who are working are dependent upon food aid?” Brian Romanchuk wonders. (Found Via Joe Weisenthal’s Twitter). [more inside]
posted by sallybrown at 9:29 AM PST - 91 comments

“Beyond disposability, present day waste practices like recycling continue the extension of profit through trash. The Container Corporation of America sponsored the creation of the recycling symbol for the first Earth Day in 1970 (Rogers 2006: 171). The American Chemistry Council, the world’s largest plastics lobby, enthusiastically testified in favor of expanding New York City’s curbside recycling program to accept rigid plastics (ACC 2010). Recycling is a far greater benefit to industry than to the environment. ” Modern Waste is an Economic Strategy (Discard Studies) We asked 3 companies to recycle Canadian plastic and secretly tracked it. Only 1 company recycled the material (CBC)
posted by The Whelk at 9:06 AM PST - 39 comments

On Dangerous Paths: an Introduction to Dungeon Synth A microgenre found at the mysterious intersection of old-school electronic music, synthesizer-based movie and video game soundtracks, and second-wave black metal, dungeon synth is quite a strange place to be. Melancholy, lo-fidelity, synthesizer albums recorded by artists like Mortiis, Depressive Silence, and Lamentation in the 1990s set the template for the genre, but never really circulated that far out of the black metal underground world. More recently, dungeon synth has made quite the comeback on platforms like Bandcamp (dungeon synth tag), lurking in the weirder corners of the digital realm, and you should be listening. This is the official B-Side dungeon synth starter pack. (Berkeley B-Side) [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 8:29 AM PST - 19 comments

What's up, Halloweirdos and Octobrocops? Every year I collect a list of good or good-adjacent horror or horror-adjacent movies available for streaming on American Netflix for your falltimes enjoyment. In past years this list has been available on Tumblr; in this year the seventh installment is located elsewhere and now features a darker sweater and a trench coat. That's right, it's The Haunting of Netflix House VII: Wes Craven’s New Netflix , comics writer Benito Cereno's yearly recommendations of the creepiest, kookiest, most mysterious and spookiest movies on Netflix. Now on Letterboxd, to make it even easier to add some scares to your watchlist... [more inside]
posted by Strange Interlude at 8:01 AM PST - 26 comments

StudioBinder is a film production company in Santa Monica. Their YouTube channel is chock-full with interesting video essays. Like Directing Styles, The Director's Chair, Advanced Filmmaking Techniques, and many more.
posted by growabrain at 7:35 AM PST - 3 comments

Robin Houston explains the history of a tweet (Threadreader) which contains all the letters of the alphabet while also describing itself. [more inside]
posted by Stark at 2:29 AM PST - 12 comments

A list of Sumerian proverbs [more inside]
posted by gkhan at 1:34 AM PST - 38 comments

My mother had green eyes. Black hair. Her name was Marie Augustine Adeline Legrand. She was born a peasant, daughter of farmers, near Dunkirk. She had one sister and seven brothers. She went to teachers college, on a scholarship, and she taught in Dunkirk. The day after an inspection, the inspector who had visited her class asked for her hand in marriage. Love at first sight. [more inside]
posted by flug at 11:49 PM PST - 6 comments

That’s it. That’s the thread. Like The Whelk ranking menswear, but government buildings. [SLTT, and wonderful]
posted by ersatzkat at 9:54 PM PST - 44 comments

There was a time when almost every rural British family who kept bees followed a strange tradition. Whenever there was a death in the family, someone had to go out to the hives and tell the bees of the terrible loss that had befallen the family. Failing to do so often resulted in further losses such as the bees leaving the hive, or not producing enough honey or even dying. Traditionally, the bees were kept abreast of not only deaths but all important family matters including births, marriages, and long absence due to journeys. If the bees were not told, all sorts of calamities were thought to happen. This peculiar custom is known as “telling the bees”.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 9:49 PM PST - 27 comments

My heart jumped when I saw the kids — they reminded me of my cousins. It was a strange feeling because the pictures also reminded me of aid campaigns for Africa

Kiwi-Tongan poet Simone Kaho writes on the politics, ethics and impact of her time with The Floating Foundation which provided volotourism medical training in Tonga, closed over kidnapping and rape charges against the founder Craig Koning. (Note: palangi is Samoan usually used for foreigner/white, akin to pakeha in NZ)
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 8:57 PM PST - 9 comments

Summer part two has come to most of Alabama, which like the rest of the Southeast US, has mostly escaped global warming until now. The current heat wave has gone on for several weeks, and is setting records at quite a pace. Echos of the European heat waves in June and July. So far, 2019 is neck and neck with 2016 for hottest year ever.
posted by Maxwell's demon at 8:35 PM PST - 43 comments

October Baseball is here for 10 lucky teams. The wildcard games start tonight, 10/1 at 5:08 pm pacific time between the Milwaukee Brewers at the Washington Nationals, followed by tomorrow's game between the Tampa Bay Devil Rays and the Oakland Athletics. [more inside]
posted by Carillon at 2:28 PM PST - 91 comments

What the Golf [YouTube][Launch Trailer] “What The Golf? is self-admittedly a game for people who hate golf. It takes a very simple concept: whack a ball, into a hole, with a club – and goes absolutely wild with it. [...] What The Golf? is excessive nonsense. At every turn, it questions what a ball, hole or course could even look like. Golf arenas become cities, wars, racetracks and guitar fretboards. What The Golf? asks the important questions only games can answer. Can golf be football? Can golf be cars? Can golf be love? Can golf be Super Hot?” [via: Rock Paper Shotgun] [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 1:31 PM PST - 28 comments

HighwayWiki is a work-in-progress collection of "facts and pictures about each and every known traffic signal and accessory, including their respective companies, dates produced, and related brands and models."
posted by cortex at 12:50 PM PST - 10 comments

A Mouse is on the Loose in the White House, and the Press Corps Scrambles to Chase it Down (Charlie Nash, Mediaite)
posted by ZeusHumms at 12:29 PM PST - 44 comments

Groupthink and Other Painful Reflections on ​Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth "The current conversation, a slow-burn hagiography through and through, frames TOPY as a tongue-in-cheek, self-aware "anti-cult"—half esoteric art project, half culture-jamming prankster pagans who struck fear in the hearts of the Thatcher and Reagan regimes through parody of a radical youth crusade. But the primary sources—many long available for those willing to look, and others just now surfacing—reveal Thee Temple to have been far from puckish liberators. TOPY and P-Orridge's knowing adoption of cult iconography and organizing principles quickly slid from satiric emulation to full embrace, and many Temple apostates describe years of escalating exploitation: a guru with a sycophantic following; the systematic breakdown of individuality and autonomy; rigid hierarchies, disciplinary regimens, and incessant bullying; preying on the suggestible and vulnerable; explosive, tyrannical outbursts; and the appropriation of others' creative voices and ideas." [more inside]
posted by The Ardship of Cambry at 12:00 PM PST - 22 comments

If you were a kid in New York City's broadcast area during the late 80s and early 90s, you may recall WPIX, or simply "Channel 11". A subsidiary of Tribune Media (which also owned the New York Daily News) since it's founding in the late 40s, WPIX resisted joining the major networks for a while and instead positioned itself as a home for local programming and movies shown during primetime nearly every night. Many years later, the network -- now Warner-Brothers-affiliated and called Pix11 -- were constantly fielding requests for one single movie promo... [more inside]
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 11:50 AM PST - 30 comments

It is that time of year again: Katmai National Park is hosting its 5th annual Fat Bear Tournament. [more inside]
posted by charmedimsure at 11:39 AM PST - 16 comments

After a slew of recent cases in the United States and Europe, the momentum toward a crackdown on illicit art and antiquities deals is growing. The legitimate art market is itself enormous—estimated at $67.4 billion worldwide at the end of 2018. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, the underground art market, which includes thefts, fakes, illegal imports, and organized looting, may bring in as much as $6 billion annually. The portion attributed to money laundering and other financial crimes is in the $3 billion range. The Art of Money Laundering by Tom Mashberg for the IMF
posted by chavenet at 11:23 AM PST - 9 comments

“Solidarity is the opposite of bad vibes. It warms you up with the trust of those around you, and it can spread beyond your immediate community. Here, we have Haley Mlotek from the Freelance Media League; Dana Kopel of New Museum Union; Crystal Stella Becerril, member of the Freelance Media League and former community organizer for Study Hall and other community and labor efforts; and Kaitlyn Chandler from the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s newest union. Writers, artists, musicians, and filmmakers are constantly pitted against each other in the name of innovation and entertainment value. If we are able to come together regardless of the rapacious and manipulative practices of capitalism, then we will be able to set a precedent against the alienating forces of competition to build a new and engaging art.” So Many Secrets : A roundtable on cultural organizing in New York City Moderated by the hosts of the Arts And Labor Podcast.
posted by The Whelk at 8:42 AM PST - 1 comment

Grieving in the internet age is weird. Despite what many make out, millennials are actually reticent to get real on social media. Instead of being emotionally candid we’re perpetually sarcastic, self-deprecating and deliberately unpolished. Being “too online” or oversharing too readily is uncool. There’s a saying that you get one sincere online post a year; use it well. So then what do you do when someone has died? Grieving in the internet age: would posting photos of my dead friend look performative? (Katie Cunningham for The Guardian)
posted by filthy light thief at 8:28 AM PST - 49 comments

The motivation for using video review in sports is obvious: to get more calls right. This seems like an easy enough mission to fulfill, but anyone who has spent even a little time watching sports on TV can attest to the fact that the application of video review is not so simple. In most sports where it is applied, video review has actually created more confusion and less clarity. Why is this the case? Follow me into an examination of thousands of years of philosophical discourse, and we will find the answer together, my friends.
posted by Etrigan at 8:28 AM PST - 28 comments

Opera singer Jessye Norman dead at 74. Norman was celebrated many times over throughout her career, including receiving five Grammys and a Kennedy Center Honor. Among her most well known performances were the title roles in Aida and Ariadne auf Naxos, a rendition of "La Marseillaise" on the 200th anniversary of Bastille Day in France, and Strauss' Four Last Songs.
posted by Cash4Lead at 8:05 AM PST - 37 comments

Watching a sleeping octopus cycle through various camouflage colors, as she appears to dream of hunting, captured on video for the first time. From PBS Nature's Octopus: Making Contact, premiering tomorrow.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 6:23 AM PST - 24 comments

The Balloon Boy Hoax—Solved (?) "Ten years ago this month, the country was captivated by a bizarre spectacle in Fort Collins that was colloquially dubbed the Balloon Boy Hoax. Although Richard Heene, the so-called Balloon Boy’s father, pleaded guilty to charges related to the prank, it was never fully clear whether it was the scam that police made it out to be." [more inside]
posted by The Blue Olly at 5:53 AM PST - 35 comments

This game is deceptively simple: name as many US cities as you can. They show up on the blank map, and you also get a bunch of statistics to motivate you. Be warned: this WILL suck up many hours of your life and can be extremely addictive. Via Sasha Trubetskoy
posted by KTamas at 4:59 AM PST - 235 comments

Can a Burger Help Solve Climate Change? - "Eating meat creates huge environmental costs. Impossible Foods thinks it has a solution." [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 12:12 AM PST - 69 comments